Princess Diana Refused To Say This One Vow During Her Wedding To King Charles

Summary

• Princess Diana seriously considered calling off her wedding to Prince Charles just two days before the ceremony, but was persuaded by her sisters not to cancel.
• Both Charles and Diana had doubts about their marriage, as Charles had told Diana he didn't love her the night before the wedding.
• Diana broke from tradition and refused to say the word 'obey' in her wedding vows, setting a modern and bold precedent for future royal brides.

When most people get married, this tends to be one of the happiest moments of their lives and there is a general excitement around the build-up to the big day. However, there are some people who are exceptions to this.

One of these people was Princess Diana. At the time, her marriage to the then Prince Charles was a worldwide spectacle but in the years since then, it has come to light that all wasn't as it seemed both before, during, and after the marriage.

Even on the wedding day, there was potentially a bit of animosity between the pair, with Diana refusing to say one vow in particular to her new husband, which hints that this marriage was doomed from the start.

Did Princess Diana Want To Call Off The Wedding?

Whilst at the time it might have seemed that Diana and Charles were living a real-life fairytale, what has come to light since the breakdown of their marriage and in particular in the last few years with The Crown, was that not everything was perfect even before they got married.

In fact, things were so bad between the pair that it has even been rumored that Diana wanted to call off the whole wedding entirely. This turned out to be true, with it being as little as just two days before the wedding that Diana was seriously considering calling the entire wedding off.

However, she ended up having to be persuaded by her sisters not to cancel the wedding, with them pointing out that Diana's face was all over the cups and tea towels, not to mention that her iconic dress had taken many hours to design and create and would have been a waste had it not gone ahead.

Whilst their early relationship might have seemed like a fairytale to some, the reality was that Diana and Charles hadn't known each other that long before getting engaged, having first met in 1977 when Charles was dating Diana's sister.

As their relationship progressed, Diana was increasingly suspicious of his relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, something that was covered extensively in The Crown.

This is what led her to question whether the marriage should even go ahead and made her have a lot of doubts in her mind. However, obviously, Diana decided to go ahead with the wedding and the rest is history.

Did Diana Know Charles Didn't Want To Marry Her?

It appears that one thing Charles and Diana could agree on was the fact that neither of them was sure about the marriage. While pre-wedding jitters might be normal for most people, most people aren't members of the Royal Family and are days away from their wedding being televised to the whole world.

Prince Philip had written to Charles, telling him that he was ordering him to marry Diana for her honor and for the protection of the family. He had apparently thought that by showing his friends this they would help him call off the wedding, but clearly that never happened.

Whilst it's unknown if Charles had told Diana that he also didn't want to go ahead with the wedding (and vice versa), what is known is that Charles had told her that he didn't love her the night before the wedding, which isn't exactly what a bride-to-be wants to hear from her husband.

Princess Diana Refused To 'Obey' Her Husband

Most royal marriages tend to be a lot more traditional than other weddings, especially ones that were happening around the time Diana and Charles got married. Even Sarah Ferguson and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, kept the traditional vows, despite getting married after Charles and Diana.

However, what is widely known about Diana's time in the Royal Family is that she wasn't one to stick to tradition and was certainly able to make her mark and leave behind a legacy that was hoped to bring the family more up-to-date and slightly away from these traditions.

What many might not have realized was that this started on the day they got married. Whilst royal brides before her had to strictly follow the traditional vows, Diana chose to move away from this slightly and refused to say a certain vow, as she wanted to make her vows a little more modern.

She did this by taking out the word 'obey' from her vows. Traditionally, the man would say "to love and to cherish" and the woman would say "to love, to cherish and to obey." However, Diana decided that she didn't like this part of her vows, so requested for it to be removed, with this request being permitted.

This was certainly a bold statement to make at the time and was only followed when Kate Middleton married Prince William in 2011, with Meghan Markle also following suit when she married Prince Harry.

It was only at the time that Kate and William got married that, despite it being a traditional vow, especially in royal circles, the General Synod said that it was very rare at that point in time for the 'obey' part to make it into a person's wedding vows, so it only made sense not to use it.