Until March 2024, Kate Middleton’s life could be symbolically divided into two time periods: before the wedding, on April 29, 2011, and after the wedding. Unfortunately for the Windsors and also for the British Crown, the cancer she announced in 2024 and which is now in remission has had to carve a notch as deep or deeper in her biographical life.
Nevertheless, her union with Prince William, the future king, is still remembered as the epitome of the perfect wedding, with a serenely regal couple and guests who rose to the occasion with their restraint and attire. Only the bride’s sister, Pippa Middleton, strayed slightly from the script with a dress that accentuated the silhouette of her backside. The regret must have lasted for weeks.
It is impossible to know whether Kate Middleton, seized by nostalgia, falls prey to the temptation to open the wedding photo album today. Or whether she replays on her favorite screen the video that immortalized their engagement to remember the happiness of that day. It is possible that state weddings are not as enjoyable as those that carry no institutional burden, and that, instead of looking back at this historic moment, another date of a private nature is celebrated in the privacy of the marriage.
Furthermore, some of the people who appear in those memory documents have disappeared completely from the orbit of the British royal family. To be precise: quite a few. Although the guests at that wedding numbered up to 1,900, the steady stream of defections over these 15 years is striking.
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
The kings Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip must have enjoyed watching the splendid wedding of Kate Middleton and her grandson William: it certified the best future for the Crown. The image of the Dukes of Cambridge was already then more attractive for the monarchy’s continuity than that of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, only lived a decade longer after the wedding of the now Princes of Wales, although he was able to meet their three grandchildren: he died on 9 April 2021. Queen Elizabeth died a year later, fully aware of the cracks that threatened the British monarchy: those produced by the Sussexes and by her son Andrew.
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex
In 2011, when Kate and William’s wedding brought the entire British royal family together, Prince Harry was still the royal family’s golden bachelor. Although he had dated a few recognized girlfriends, none had been candidates to formalize the relationship. His own wedding seven years later would precipitate events that ended in a total rupture between the brothers.
Nevertheless, at the time Harry was the number-one supporter of Kate Middleton: he adored her. Years later, he revealed that the trio’s harmony wasn’t as such and that, in fact, he was not the best man at the wedding, as was assumed. It was staged “for the show,” he wrote in his memoirs. The royal godparents were two of William’s friends: James Meade and Thomas Van Straubenzee.
Family photo at the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William of England.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
Today we know: Prince William’s relationship with his uncle is distant in public, although recent revelations hold that privately there are phone calls and a certain protection. However, after Kate and William’s wedding, it emerged that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor never forgave the couple for not inviting Sarah Ferguson to their wedding.
Ferguson was persona non grata at Buckingham Palace since her divorce in 1996, especially since seven months later she was photographed topless with her financial advisor John Bryan. Moreover, she had received lucrative offers from various television channels to provide inside details of the wedding of the Princes of Wales from within.
Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice of York
As a result of the ex-Dukes of York’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Eugenie and Beatrice’s position in the Crown was greatly endangered. However, what ultimately displaced them from the family photo was the publication of emails proving that, indeed, both profited, through their parents’ businesses, from the money of the billionaire pedophile, jailed for child trafficking among other crimes.
Katharine Lucy Mary, Duchess of Kent
She was one of Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite political cousins and one of the first commoners (although her family included a baronet) to enter the British aristocracy, in 1961. She died, at 92, in September 2025, after a life full of sorrows (she lost one of her four children in 1977 and suffered a severe depression), controversies (she converted to Catholicism in 1994, with the monarch’s consent) and joys (she enjoyed a happy marriage and was loved by public opinion). For decades she handed Wimbledon trophies, a task that Kate Middleton has been performing for years.
Constantine of Greece
Her death was also the reason why Kate Middleton and Prince William’s 15th anniversary wedding would not be celebrated. He was the head of the Greek Crown and, moreover, spent part of his exile in London, under the protection of the Windsors. In fact, there are strong kinship ties between the two families, for Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, born in Corfu, was the son of Prince Andrew of Greece, who in turn was the son of King George I of Greece.
Lalla Salma of Morocco
Although not completely faded from view, the former princess of Morocco leads a life away from the media spotlight. Divorced from Mohammed VI in 2018, she attended the wedding of the then-Princes of Wales dressed in a pink and gold caftan that drew a great deal of attention, to the point of placing her on many lists as the best-dressed guest. Nicknamed ‘the phantom princess,’ it was rumored that she had purchased a house on the Greek island of Kea.
