Queen attends ‘society wedding of the year’

Prince Charles gives away Lord
Mountbatten’s great granddaughter

LONDON: The Queen and other members of the royal family attended the ‘society wedding of the year’ yesterday, where the Prince of Wales gave away heiress Alexandra Knatchbull, the daughter of his close friends Lord and Lady Brabourne.

Wearing a peach floral dress emblazoned with a gold brooch and matching hat, The Queen was joined by the Duke of Edinburgh as she entered the ceremony at Romsey Abbey, Hampshire, where Prince Charles, dressed in a grey-three piece suit, accompanied Miss Knatchbull down the aisle to her waiting fiancé, Thomas Hooper, reports The Telegraph.

Also joining the celebration was Princess Anne, who made her way into the service alongside her parents and brother, choosing a lilac outfit similar in style to that donned by her mother the Queen.

Miss Knatchbull, 33, a forensic accountant and theology graduate of Regent’s Park College Oxford, is the great-granddaughter of the late Lord Mountbatten and the goddaughter of the late Dianna, Princess of Wales.

Draped in a white satin wedding dress finished with lace embroidery, Miss Knatchbull chose to be given away on what would have been her great-grandfather’s 116th birthday.

Lord Mountbatten was killed when a bomb planted by the IRA exploded on their leisure boat in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, Ireland.Her father, Lord Norton Brabourne, is the godson of the Duke of Edinburgh and one of the Duke of Cambridge’s godfathers.

He is a lifelong friend of the Prince Charles, who was his best man in his wedding to his wife, Lady Penelope.

Miss Knatchbull’s brother, Nicholas, also attended school with the Duke of Cambridge, acting as a peer mentor to William throughout his studies at Eton.Entering the abbey before the Royal Family, Lord and Lady Brabourne were seen linking arms as they walked into the service, a sign of unity following the public disclosures about Lord Brabourne’s affair with businesswoman Jeannie McWeeny.

In a congregation filled with members of the British and foreign aristocracy, Queen Sophia of Spain and the former King Constantine II and Queen Anne-Marie of Greece had arrived earlier in the week in order to celebrate the occasion.Children from The Mountbatten School, which was set up by Miss Knatchbull’s great-grandfather in 1969 and to whom she is now patron, were also in attendance at the ceremony.

Following the service, the newlyweds left the abbey followed by three young flower girls wearing pink dresses and holding bouquets of flowers.Stopping to pose for photographs outside the abbey’s stonecast arch doorway, Miss Knatchbull gleamed with a broad smile etched across her face, before turning to kiss her new husband to the applause of several wedding guests.

Speaking before the service, Rev Canon Timothy Sledge, who married the couple, said Miss Knatchbull and her family had been “looking forward to the big day”.“They’ve put in a huge amount of effort, thought and care into it. It’s got that personal touch,” he said. “It’s very much what they wanted and what the bride wanted.”

Miss Knatchbull met Mr Hooper, a director of teacher-entrepreneurial partnership Third Space Learning, through her work at the consultancy firm FTI Consulting. The pair had been in a long-term relationship for several years prior to their marriage, with Mr Hooper proposing earlier last year.