Prince Charles Sent Princess Diana an Unexpected Note and Thoughtful Gift the Night Before Their Royal Wedding

Part of Charles’s note read that he was “so proud” of his bride-to-be.

Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their wedding day.Credit: 

Getty

There are conflicting reports about how Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer spent the night before their royal wedding on July 29, 1981—though both could be true at the same time.
According to some reports, Charles gave Diana a thoughtful letter and a sweet gift to encourage her before she walked down the aisle.
Other reports indicate that the future king told his bride that he didn’t love her, but both thought it was too late to pull out of the wedding at the late hour.

The night before the royal wedding of the century, Prince Charles wrote his bride, Lady Diana Spencer, an unexpected note and gave her a gift to go along with it.

According to Brides, the future king, 32, wanted to offer Diana, who had just turned 20, some reassurance before she walked down the aisle at St. Paul’s Cathedral with the eyes of the world upon her on July 29, 1981. In her book The Duchess: The Untold Story, royal biographer Penny Junor wrote, “The night before the wedding, which Diana spent at Clarence House with her sister, Jane, he sent her a note, along with a signet ring bearing the Princes of Wales feathers.”

Princess Diana and Prince Charles on July 29, 1981.Getty

He reportedly wrote in the note, “I’m so proud of you, and when you come up, I’ll be there at the altar for you tomorrow. Just look ‘em in the eye and knock ‘em dead.”

According to Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell, she often sent romantic notes to Charles, but they often went unreciprocated. “It’s such a sad thing to say that he never loved her, and so he never returned the compliment,” Burrell told Marie Claire. “He wasn’t romantic. He tried to be, but he didn’t have a romantic bone in his body.”

Diana opted to not wear the signet ring Charles had given her as a gift when she walked down the aisle, though Hello! reported that she did wear it during a private photoshoot at her Kensington Palace home in 1983 and later to a polo match in 1988.

Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their July 29, 1981 wedding day.Getty

Though reports indicate that Charles gave Diana the sweet note and thoughtful gift, other reports tell a different story. Penny Thornton, a friend of Diana’s and an astrologer she sometimes consulted, said in an ITV documentary that the night before their wedding, Charles gave Diana a “devastating” blow—he told her that he didn’t love her.

In the 2020 documentary The Diana Interview: Revenge of the Princess, Thornton explained, “I think Charles didn’t want to go into the wedding on a false premise. He wanted to square it with her, and it was devastating for Diana.”

“She didn’t want to go through with the wedding at that point,” Thornton added. “She thought about not attending the wedding.” But, Thornton continued, “despite the concerns on both sides, the wedding went ahead the next day.”

Prince Charles and Princess Diana at the altar of St. Paul’s Cathedral.Getty

Junor later wrote, per Marie Claire, that Charles also wanted to pull out of the wedding, but also thought it was too late. “Charles was not convinced he was doing the right thing in marrying Diana, but there was no way out and, bolstered by the hope that things would be different once they were married, he put a brave face on it,” Junor wrote.

Diana later told her biographer Andrew Morton for his book Diana: Her True Story—in Her Own Words that she was “deadly calm” on the morning of the wedding, telling Morton, “I felt like a lamb being led to the slaughter. I knew it, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

Princess Diana and Prince Charles kissing on their wedding day.Getty

Yet, even Diana fell for the fairytale of it all to some degree. “I really thought I was the luckiest girl in the world,” she said. “He was going to take care of me…But I was wrong.”