- Representatives of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have confirmed that their wedding in the backyard is not legal.
- Markle told Oprah the vow exchange took place three days before the royal wedding in 2018.
- Markle did not say at the time that the celebration of the backyard was legal.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Representatives of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle confirmed to The Daily Beast on Monday that their secret wedding in the backyard was not a legal ceremony.
“The couple exchanged personal vows a few days before their official / legal wedding on May 19,” representatives of the couple told The Daily Beast’s royal correspondent Tom Sykes.
Sources familiar with the matter told Insider that the couple had exchanged vows privately days before their official ceremony in 2018.
Markle said the same thing when she and Harry sat down with Oprah Winfrey for their tell-all interview that aired on March 7 in the US. Markle never said at the time that the ceremony was legal, although she alluded to getting married and shared it. she and Harry cherished the privacy of their vow exchange.
“We were married three days before our wedding,” Markle told Winfrey. “Nobody knows, but we called the archbishop and said, ‘This thing, this spectacle is for the world, but we want us to have a connection between us.’
“So the vows we made in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury,” she continued.
A representative of the Church of England declined to comment earlier when Insider reached out and stated that “the archbishop does not comment on personal or pastoral matters.”
Experts told Insider earlier that the ceremony was probably not legal
Insider’s Monica Humphries earlier spoke to two royal experts who said the ceremony was not legal, citing the location and apparent lack of witnesses.
Humphries wrote that the couple would need two witnesses to hold a marriage ceremony legally under the Church of England’s Canons, and the marriage ceremony should take place in a specially licensed setting (which would not be a private house or backyard not). allowed).
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during their wedding ceremony on May 19, 2018.
DOMINIC LIPINSKI / AFP / Getty Images
As the Daily Mail reported earlier in March, the Church of England insisted on recognizing private homes, lakes and pubs as places where people could possibly get married and maintained their position that weddings should take place at registered religious buildings.
Rev. Canon Giles Fraser, Rector of St. Mary Newington Church in London, told Insider that “it was probably a blessing. But they were legally married in Windsor.” The couple’s official royal wedding took place in the St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.
Harry Benson, an official from the Marriage Foundation, quoted Fraser as saying that the exchange between Harry and Markle was probably not a legally binding ceremony.
‘Although in some circumstances the archbishop may have been able to grant him a special license, he may not have been able to overcome the legal need to have weddings licensed to a building and to attend two witnesses, without which a marriage should not be “public,” Benson said.
In an opinion piece, Samantha Grindell of Insider claims that the legality of the ceremony is irrelevant and that the exchange of the backyard means more to the couple than the television wedding that 29 million viewers watched.
“Markle and Harry’s decision to make their vows private indicates that the public ceremony was not something they really wanted to do; it was a gathering they had no choice but to abide by,” he said. wrote Grindell.
“The royal family’s commitment to massive public weddings seems to be another example of an unnecessary tradition in the monarchy,” she added.