by Omid Scobie
In one of his many interviews, Thomas claimed a furious Harry called him up and hissed, “If you had listened to me, this would never have happened.” But no such conversation occurred. In another dramatic turn of events, just the day after saying he was not attending the wedding, Thomas told reporters that he couldn’t imagine missing such a historical event.
A wounded Meghan directed Kensington Palace officials to release a statement she wrote herself about the incident, calling it “a deeply personal matter” and requesting her privacy as they sorted it out. While she in no way wanted her family drama to play out so publicly, she felt forced to take some sort of action.
Despite her father’s behavior, she was nonetheless crushed at the thought of his not being there for the wedding. From the time she was a little girl, her father had doted on her, from creating an interracial Barbie family for Christmas to helping out with set design for all of Meghan’s school plays to flying in from LA with a toolkit to help her move into her Toronto townhouse with the simple request of being paid in coffee.
“As much as she was hurt and humiliated, she wanted him to be there and was willing to move on,” a close friend said. “Plus, she was worried about him; she honestly wasn’t sure if he was actually okay. His behavior was bizarre.”
His bespoke suit and custom shoes were waiting at the Oliver Brown tailors in Chelsea, as was the military veteran Harry had asked to help accompany Meghan’s father for his journey from London to Windsor. “The treatment that Doria received when she arrived here is exactly what was planned for Thomas,” a senior aide added, noting that he would have been put up in a hotel and given a protection officer and assistant during his stay.
With only four days left before her wedding day, though, Meghan received more devastating news from her father—again through a celebrity gossip website.
Laying the blame firmly at the feet of the prying press, Thomas claimed the stress had caused him to have a heart attack. His doctors advised him that he needed surgery the upcoming Thursday, just two days before his daughter’s vows, to clear a blockage, repair damage, and implant several stents into his blood vessels. Short of some sort of miraculous recovery, he said, he would be in no shape to fly across the Atlantic and thus would not be attending the royal wedding.
Troubled, Meghan reached out to Thomas via text message, “I’ve been reaching out to you all weekend but you’re not taking any of our calls or replying to any texts . . . Very concerned about your health and safety and have taken every measure to protect you but not sure what more we can do if you don’t respond . . . Do you need help? Can we send the security team down again? I’m very sorry to hear you’re in the hospital but need you to please get in touch with us . . . What hospital are you at?”
Ten minutes later she followed up with another. “Harry and I made a decision earlier today and are dispatching the same security guys you turned away this weekend to be a presence on the ground to make sure you’re safe. . . . they will be there at your disposal as soon as you need them. Please please call as soon as you can . . . all of this is incredibly concerning but your health is most important,” she wrote.
That evening Thomas sent a short response to say that he appreciated the offer of security but didn’t feel in any danger. Instead, he wrote, he would recover at a motel. Meghan asked for details but he didn’t reply.
With confirmation that Thomas was unable to travel, Meghan asked the Palace to release another statement on her behalf: “Sadly, my father will not be attending our wedding. I have always cared for my father and hope he can be given the space he needs to focus on his health.”
Not a word about the subject had been spoken when Meghan brought Doria to meet the Queen and Prince Philip earlier in the day, but the situation still caused her to quietly feel embarrassed about the public drama during their afternoon tea at Windsor Castle.
Questions were raised about the validity of Thomas’s claims, but Meghan told Kensington Palace staff that no one was to discredit her father. “Meghan is very clear that despite everything that happened, people on her behalf are not to criticize him,” a Palace source said. “The week of the wedding there were lots of things that could have been said, but she quite rightly took the long point of view that correcting the record wasn’t worth trashing her father.”
Meghan placed some of the blame on herself. Having spent the past year and a half in the glaring spotlight, she understood what the pressure from the media was like.
“He’s vulnerable,” she told a friend. “He’s been baited. A lot of the tabloid journalists have been coaxing him and paying him. I don’t know if he really even had a chance.”
Harry also blamed the media for the whole situation. “The pressure he was put under for six months before he finally cracked and started to participate,” a senior courtier said of Meghan’s father, “that’s what Harry’s angry about.”
One individual close to the couple summed it up this way: “There is a sort of aggressive intrusiveness, and a reckless, irresponsible, almost hostility to the media’s actions that’s deeply harmful. I don’t think the paparazzi are the same. I think that has changed. But the sort of ruthless malevolence of some sections of the media, and it is malevolent, is genuinely bad. What they’ve done to her father, drawn him out from his private life and forced him out into the open, and then waving checks at him, it’s just absolutely terrible. He wanted to live privately. He would have continued to live privately. He would have been at the wedding if the media had left him alone as they were asked to. And there’s no public interest argument to excuse intruding into the private life of Thomas Markle.”
In an effort to make things better for his bride, Harry reached out to the man he thought to be the most suitable replacement: his father. Prince Charles had some experience, having escorted down the aisle not two years earlier a family friend, Alexandra Knatchbull, whose father, Lord Brabourne, had fallen ill at the last minute. “I asked him, and I think he knew it was coming,” Harry said in a BBC documentary. “He immediately said, ‘Yes, of course. I’ll do whatever Meghan needs, and I’m here to support you.’ ” (The future king now keeps a framed black-and-white photograph of himself escorting his daughter-in-law at his Clarence House residence.)
After a week of will-he-or-won’t-he, with Meghan’s father stealing the spotlight and overshadowing what should have been the happiest time of her life, Kensington Palace announced shortly before her big day that Prince Charles would give away the bride. The Kensington Palace statement was brief: “Ms. Meghan Markle has asked His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales to accompany her down the aisle of the Quire of St. George’s Chapel on her Wedding Day. The Prince of Wales is pleased to be able to welcome Ms. Markle to The Royal Family in this way.”
Harry and Meghan spent part of the day before their wedding traveling in their navy blue Range Rover up the Long Walk toward Windsor Castle for one final look at the venue they had fallen in love with. Crowds had already gathered in the small English market town ahead of the grand spectacle, and hundreds of broadcasters from around the world were already set up to capture what were sure to be magical moments.
The final rehearsal—which also served as an opportunity for Doria to meet William, Kate, George, and Charlotte for the first time—went a long way to soothe Meghan’s jangled nerves, which had been keeping her awake. “In those final days she knew she had to let everything be as it was; she couldn’t change what had happened,” a close friend said.
Everyone, including William, felt sorry for Meghan. To witness her have her wedding day potentially ruined by her own father was heartbreaking. Doria was devastated for Meghan but not surprised. To her mind, her ex had rarely been a reliable person.
Thankfully Meghan had her friends and mom by her side to lean on. “If it wasn’t for Harry, Doria, and her friends, Meghan herself says that she wouldn’t have mentally got through it,” a friend said.
The night before the wedding, following last-minute media prep
aration sessions, Meghan got a facial and energy-healing session at Cliveden House from the skincare guru Sarah Chapman, who had become a close friend in the months running up to the wedding. Meghan enjoyed her calming energy and felt that a session with Sarah was more than just a facial treatment—it served as therapy, too.
Still, despite the relaxing appointment, she had one piece of unfinished business. She sent her father one last text. He did not reply.
Sitting in a bath later that night, FaceTiming with a friend, the bride-to-be said she had left her dad a final message. “I can’t sit up all night just pressing send.”
Maintaining her calm, Meghan reminded her worried friends that the next day was about the fact that she had found true love. “I’m getting married,” she said. “I want to be happy about that.”
14
Stand by Me
Thanks to a 6:00 a.m. wake-up call, Meghan was practically up with the sun.
Soon, trays of cereal, fresh fruit, juices, and tea were being wheeled into her suite, where she had breakfast with her mom.
“It was just like old friends catching up, having breakfast together,” her makeup artist and close friend Daniel Martin said. “We were playing around with her beagle, Guy. It was a very chill morning.”
Other than what had happened with Thomas, the entire wedding process was running smoothly (perhaps because there was no room for any other drama).
If Meghan radiated calm, Daniel, tasked with preparing the bride of the biggest wedding of the year, definitely had some nerves. The makeup artist—who had become a good friend of Meghan’s after they met during New York Fashion Week not long after Suits was picked up—had been planning for this day since December, when he received a text from her asking what his plans were for May 19.
The Met Gala was around then, he texted back. Then probably to Cannes for the film festival. But for her he could shift things around. Why?
Her response was an emoji of a bride and a groom.
Immediately he began to think about how he would achieve the right look: natural but effervescent, almost “lit from within.” The biggest challenge had been their conflicting schedules, which meant they were never able to do a proper run-through. Daniel had to work from the images of her early May hair trial as inspiration. But because of their years working together, he knew what Meghan wanted; she was a woman confident enough to let her own beauty, and a hint of freckles, shine through.
Due to the secrecy surrounding the whole event, however, Daniel wasn’t sure who else was involved in the process. Two competing beauty pros can make for a very uncomfortable situation. But when he spotted Julia Roberts’s longtime hairstylist, Serge Normant, coming down the stairs, he said, “Thank goodness.”
While Serge twisted Meghan’s locks into one of her signature looks, the most perfectly tousled of chignons, Daniel went to work on her mother’s makeup, blending peach shadows to sharpen her eye. Then the men swapped, and Daniel gave Meghan a dewy glow with a mix of toner, moisturizer, a sunscreen primer, and just a spot treatment of foundation on her T-zone. He finished up by smudging chestnut, cocoa, and rust shadows onto her lids, lining her eyes, and applying lashes to their corners. Skipping lipstick, he went with a balm to enhance her natural color and, lastly, added a swipe of cream coral blush on her cheeks for a slight flush.
Meghan streamed a playlist from her Spotify on her phone. Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Holly, and Ben E. King played as they gossiped while preparing. “It was just very easy, like old friends getting her ready for a press junket like we used to,” Daniel said.
When Meghan caught a glimpse of herself in the tall antique mirror—her classic gown framed by a sixteen-and-a-half-foot veil hand-embroidered with fifty-three flowers that represented the commonwealth countries, the winter sweet that grew in front of the cottage where she and Harry lived, and a California poppy to represent her home state—she was radiant. The fabric of her gown, a specially woven, double-bonded silk cady served as a light-reflecting mirror to make her glow. The hem at the front was three-quarters of an inch shorter than she was, so she looked as though she were floating.
Meghan was hustled past the oversize white canopy tent that had been installed to prevent anyone from getting even the slightest peek of her dress and into the Queen’s maroon-and-gold 1950 Rolls-Royce Phantom IV, which had been parked outside her suite for nearly three hours, and it was only then that the enormity of the moment sunk in. Two billion pairs of eyes would be watching her get married. Trailing Meghan’s Rolls in his own town car, Daniel gaped at the enormous crowds dotting the countryside’s rolling hills. “People had camped out for days just to catch a glimpse,” he marveled.
Many who had never before seen themselves represented in royal celebrations—such as Brits with Caribbean roots in Brixton—reveled in Meghan’s big day.
Meghan had gone to the district in South London in January to meet with the talented DJs and producers who made up the youth-led radio station Reprezent, a program developed in response to growing knife crime in the area. The official visit offered a chance to win over the community, which was largely of Afro-Caribbean descent, one not previously on the royal family’s radar.
Still new to such engagements, Meghan had been the one to reach out to the training program. With its focus on mental health support for youth, it lined up with the goals she and Harry shared. Three days before Christmas, Reprezent’s founder and CEO, Shane Carey, received a call from a Palace aide that the pair would like to stop in for a visit, sending him into a tailspin of long nights as he anxiously prepared to show off the work he’d been “slogging at” for the past fifteen years.
It was well worth the effort. Following an afternoon meeting with Carey, Harry and Meghan took a spin through the studios. While they both gamely donned headphones to listen to a track by the St. Lucian–born house artist Poté, it was Meghan who impressed the seventeen-year-old DJ Gloria Beyi with knowledge of her work. And she stunned YV Shells, a twenty-four-year-old medical student who worked at the station while pursuing his degree, when she revealed she had heard about his work promoting gender equality.
Following fist bumps instead of handshakes, the couple left on such a high that they chose to make an impromptu detour to greet the fans who had gathered outside. Meghan knelt to greet each child in the line, which snaked around the studio. When one gentleman told her that he would be making the trek to Windsor that May to join the mobs of fans lining the roadway to their vows, she thanked him for his kindness. “That means so much to me,” Meghan chirped. “It’s going to be a very special day for all of us.”
And indeed, Brixton locals took to the streets to celebrate the couple’s nuptials. Above a stretch of roadway generally reserved for the flags of Caribbean islands and African nations that represent the neighborhood, someone had strung up from one side of the street to the other the Union Jack and American flags. Antoney Waugh, a native of Jamaica who met Harry and his bride in January, said, “She’s changing the norm.”
Meanwhile, at Windsor Castle’s Round Tower, wedding guests in their finery and fascinators stepped into a scene out of an old-fashioned fairy tale. Passing under the archway of tumbling foliage the florist Philippa Craddock and her team of thirty had spent four days assembling, they were enveloped by the sweet peas and jasmine lightly scenting the fourteenth-century Gothic church.
George and Amal Clooney, David and Victoria Beckham, Elton John, Priyanka Chopra, Idris Elba, Serena Williams, Oprah Winfrey, and Meghan’s former Suits castmates, including Abigail Spencer and Rick Hoffman, found their famous names printed out on cards set in the English oak pews of St. George’s Chapel, or, if they were lucky enough to be seated in the quire at the front, decorated with silver birch, foxgloves, and cow parsley harvested from the grounds of the Windsor estate. Craddock, in fact, had spied the cow parsley’s delicate white flowers scattered throughout the English countryside just days earlier and asked John Anderson, the Crown Estate’s Keeper of Gardens, i
f there was any on hand they could use, working it into the arrangements of garden roses and Meghan’s favorite peonies.
The Rolls-Royce stopped at the chapel first to drop off Meghan’s mother, who wore Oscar de la Renta. She had been fitted for the outfit in Los Angeles, two months prior to the ceremony. Of the initial fitting, co-creative lead Fernando Garcia said Doria “brought us snacks. They were healthy snacks because she’s a runner.” The hatmaker Stephen Jones created Doria’s mint beret and also made hats for a few of Meghan’s friends.
Then the Rolls-Royce picked up Jessica and Ben’s seven-year-old twins, Brian and John, whose closeness to their “Auntie Meg” had earned them roles as pageboys. In only ten minutes, the California girl, who left behind the sunshine and unfettered existence of her home, would make her official transition to Duchess.
Absent a maid of honor to help Meghan with her gown, it was Clare Waight Keller, the designer of her dress, who stepped in. The then-artistic director for Givenchy rode ahead of the bride so she would be waiting on the castle’s West Steps when Meghan arrived.
It was the culmination of a process that had begun not long after Harry and Meghan had announced their engagement. From a list of the many designers who had submitted sketches to Meghan, she decided to meet with the Birmingham-born Keller, who not only had the requisite British roots but was also the first female artistic director of a brand Meghan had loved for years.
Aides arranged for Clare to sit down with Meghan at Kensington Palace, during which time they spent thirty minutes poring over sketches and discussing Meghan’s wish for something modern yet timeless. By their second meeting in January 2018, Meghan decided to task Clare with making the gown. “It was an extraordinary moment when she told me,” Clare recalled. “It was an incredible thing to be part of such an historic moment.”