Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has died at the age of 96. The queen was the longest-serving British monarch ever and the oldest reigning female monarch in world history.
Her death comes a year and a half after the loss of her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. He was 99.
The pair had an epic love story, and a courtship that was capped off with a gorgeous, headline-making wedding.
Long before Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge or Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, there was another royal wedding the world eagerly anticipated: the nuptials of then-Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten in 1947.
The pair, who were married for 73 years, were wed on Nov. 20, 1947, at Westminster Abbey. It was a bright spot for many British people after the years of austerity and darkness during World War II.
“For months, the public was treated to tantalizing hints about the details of the bridesmaids’ dresses and the cake and so on,” Sarika Bose, a royalty expert and a lecturer in Victorian literature at the University of British Columbia, told HuffPost. “Here you had this young couple that represented hope for a new, happier age after the war.”
Not unlike Harry and Meghan and Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, Princess Elizabeth and her suitor were seen as a breath of fresh air. The dashing Philip Mountbatten, who was 26 at the time of the wedding, had served in World War II and possessed a slightly rebellious attitude ― at least by royal standards. Elizabeth, then 21, fell hard for him.
According to their mutual cousin Patricia Mountbatten, the future queen saw that behind his slightly steely exterior, “Philip had a capacity for love which was waiting to be unlocked, and Elizabeth unlocked it.”
Below, we take a look back at Elizabeth and Philip’s wedding.
Before You Go
