Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi’s Wedding, 2020
A pandemic wedding for about twenty people in a small chapel at Windsor, with a vintage Hartnell dress lent by the Queen and the same tiara she had worn in 1947.
Princess Beatrice’s wedding was meant to be a spring occasion at St James’s Palace with a reception in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Instead, on July 17, 2020, with Covid-19 restrictions in force, she married Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi in a small chapel in Windsor Great Park before about twenty people, her grandparents the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh among them. The dress she wore was borrowed from the Queen’s own wardrobe. It was a quiet wedding, and its sense of family and continuity is exactly why it has lasted in the memory.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Date | Friday, July 17, 2020 |
| Place (ceremony) | Royal Chapel of All Saints, Royal Lodge, Windsor |
| Reception | A small private reception at Royal Lodge |
| The dress (designer) | Norman Hartnell, from the Queen’s wardrobe, altered by Angela Kelly and Stewart Parvin |
| Guests | About 20 |
| Officiant | The Rev. Paul Wright, with the Rev. Martin Poll |
The couple
Princess Beatrice, a granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II, and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi had known each other since childhood; their families had been friends for decades. They began dating in the autumn of 2018 and became engaged in Italy in September 2019. The engagement was announced on September 26, 2019.
Their daughter, Sienna Elizabeth, was born on September 18, 2021, and a second daughter, Athena Elizabeth Rose, on January 22, 2025.
The ceremony
The original plan was for a wedding on May 29, 2020, at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, followed by a reception in the Buckingham Palace gardens. The pandemic made that impossible, and the couple married instead at the Royal Chapel of All Saints, a small private chapel near Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park.
The rules of the time shaped the service. There were no congregational hymns, and the National Anthem was played but not sung. The readings were Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 and a poem by E. E. Cummings. The Rev. Paul Wright and the Rev. Martin Poll officiated.
The couple broke with the royal custom of Welsh gold: the bride’s ring was a platinum and diamond band by Shaun Leane, and the groom chose a vintage gold band. The palace released four official photographs over the following two days, rather than the usual balcony and procession.
The dress
The Queen lent her granddaughter a vintage Norman Hartnell gown from her own wardrobe, in shades of ivory peau de soie taffeta, trimmed with duchess satin and set with diamanté. Angela Kelly, the Queen’s longtime dresser, and the designer Stewart Parvin remodeled it to fit the bride for her wedding.
It was an ingenious solution to the problem of a wedding dress for a scaled-down ceremony, and it carried unusual meaning. Hartnell had also designed the Queen’s own wedding dress in 1947, and to complete the connection Beatrice wore the Queen Mary Fringe Tiara, the same diamond fringe tiara that the Queen had worn, and famously had repaired, on the morning of her wedding to Prince Philip. Her champagne satin shoes by Valentino were a pair she had already worn to Prince William’s wedding in 2011.
For more gowns with royal histories, see our guide to royal wedding dresses.
The reception
The celebration afterward was a small private reception at Royal Lodge. The bride’s bouquet of trailing jasmine, sweet peas, ivory spray roses, pink garden roses, wax flower, astilbe and sprigs of myrtle was later taken to Westminster Abbey and laid on the Grave of the Unknown Warrior, as royal brides have done since 1923.
Why it mattered
The Beatrice wedding came at a moment when couples everywhere were postponing, shrinking or canceling their weddings, and it showed that a small wedding could still be a beautiful one. Its most useful idea, though, was the dress. Wearing a mother’s or grandmother’s gown, altered to fit, has sustainability and sentiment on its side, and Beatrice showed how well it can be done. The shoes worn before, the heirloom tiara and the private venue all pointed the same way. For comparison, see how Carolyn Bessette’s small wedding handled privacy a generation earlier, and read The Great Royal Weddings for the grander tradition.
Borrow the idea
Wear a family dress. A mother’s or grandmother’s gown, or even a formal evening dress, can be remodeled with new sleeves, a new hem or a changed neckline. Find a skilled alterations specialist early, and read our guide to bridal salon alternatives.
Rewear your shoes. Good shoes you already love, and can walk in, are a better choice than new ones you have never broken in. See our bridal shoe guide.
Make a small wedding feel complete. With twenty guests, every detail can be personal: a reading chosen together, a family ring or tiara, a meal at home.
Honor your grandparents. If they can be there, give them a place of honor at the ceremony, as Beatrice’s grandparents had at hers.
Written and edited by the Today’s Weddings editors. How we research and check what we publish is set out in our editorial standards. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
