HISTORY’s Moment in Media: The Wedding of the Century -- Lady Diana and Prince Charles

On July 29, 1981 -- 44 years ago this month -- 20-year-old Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales. The bride was a kindergarten teacher; the groom was the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II, and therefore heir to the throne of the United Kingdom. Called “The Wedding of the Century,” it was estimated to cost $48 million, or about $170 million today.

It was also a major international media event.

The fairy-tale nuptials took place in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, the first royal wedding to be held there since Prince Arthur, Henry VII's eldest son, married Princess Catherine of Aragon in 1501. The venue was chosen over the traditional Westminster Abbey, where then-Princess Elizabeth had married Prince Philip in 1947, because of its larger capacity: 3,500 guests filled the grand, domed church, while Westminster holds only 2,000. Another 600,000 people lined the streets of London, hoping for a glimpse of the various royal carriage rides through town.

But that was dwarfed by the estimated 750 million people who watched in 74 countries around the world. In Britain, an estimated 39 million people watched, or 70 percent of the population.

Americans were glued to their screens, too. “American television, of course, was thoroughly prepared for the occasion, sometimes to the point of absurdity,” noted the veteran New York Times television critic John J. O’Connor. NBC’s Today and ABC’s Good Morning America broadcast from London for the week leading up to the wedding, which, he noted, left the morning shows with plenty of air to fill: “On NBC, Willard Scott, the irresistibly friendly weatherman, was sent to a pub for, among other things, some dart-throwing. And ABC’s Joan Lunden took a bus tour of London with an excessively chatty magician.”

Live wedding coverage started at 4:30 AM Eastern time. Local stations carried the BBC’s feed, while the networks mixed the BBC pool coverage, especially from within the church, with their own cameras. ABC one-upped its rival networks by gaining access to the feed from ITC, the independent British network. The networks also provided plenty of commentators on their London sets. (“American television, needless to say, abhors a silence,” O’Connor wrote. ABC had an actor dressed for a royal wedding in a top hat; CBS had the British TV journalist David Frost and Lady Antonia Fraser, an author and historian; NBC offered the author Robert Lacey, who wrote Majesty. The broadcasts also became part of the story: O’Connor noted that on the telecasts you could hear cheers from outside the church as people watched on their portable TVs.

The marriage, of course, proved less impressive than the wedding, and Charles and Diana divorced 15 years later. But the wedding marked the beginning of a long line of media and cultural moments. Just over a year later, the Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales reported on two rival TV movies inspired by the wedding, jockeying for bragging rights on CBS and ABC. Later, their split became its own, ongoing media drama, with countless rival books and exposés and major TV interviews.

And even as audiences have splintered and the royal family has been tarnished by scandal, it still commands an impressive TV audience. According to Britain’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the 2023 coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla was watched by 2 billion people in 125 countries.

But the “Wedding of the Century” still holds the Guinness World Record for the largest TV audience for a wedding.

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