Queen Elizabeth II instituted a ban after what happened at the 2008 royal wedding of her oldest grandchild, Peter Phillips. The now-46-year-old son of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips gave a tabloid access to the nuptials, and photos from the event later filled dozens of magazine pages.
Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips sold the photographic rights to his 2008 royal wedding
Royal weddings are major media events covered around the world. However, when it came to the marriage of now-divorced Peter and Autumn Phillips (the two officially split in 2021 after a 2020 announcement), only one insider had insider access.
That’s because the groom, per Express, sold the photographic rights to his royal wedding to Hello! Magazine for nearly $700,000. The publication had access to St. George’s Chapel, which is located on the grounds of Windsor Castle and has been the site of many royal weddings and events leading up to the ceremony.
They later featured the royal wedding in a 100-page special. It included 59 pages of photos from the couple’s wedding day.
This, as royal expert Simon Vigar explained in the documentary, Meghan: Where Did It All Go Wrong?, proved highly unusual. “Generally what happens in the private do’s, there are no cameras there, or none of our cameras there. So what happened at Peter and Autumn’s wedding is controversial and unusual.”
“Unaware of the presence of four credited photographers and a reporter, friends and family happily posed for photos,” per the outlet.
Queen Elizabeth banned senior royals from making photo deals after the royal wedding
The subsequent magazine feature “went down like a lead balloon with many members of the royal family,” Vigar said.
“They thought this was just photographers at a wedding and happily posed and grinned away,” Susie Boniface, a Mirror columnist, added. “And then [they] were quite amazed a couple of weeks afterwards [sic] to see a Hello! supplement dedicated entirely to things they thought were private family shots.”
According to a report from The Telegraph at the time, Queen Elizabeth, who was said not to have been consulted about the deal, instituted a ban following the Phillips’ royal wedding.
“It will never happen again,” a source told the outlet. “In hindsight, it should never have happened in the first place.”
Prince Harry didn’t want the Royal Rota anywhere near his and Meghan’s royal wedding
Alternatively, another one of Queen Elizabeth’s grandchildren, Prince Harry, didn’t want anyone from the Royal Rota—the press pool covering the royal family—inside St. George’s Chapel when he married Meghan Markle in May 2018.
The Duke of Sussex explained in Spare that, along with a few other things, it had become a source of drama behind the scenes. “The palace scoffed” at the idea, telling Harry it would lead to “all-out war.”
Ultimately, he got what he wanted. “After weeks of wrangling,” an agreement was reached. “The Royal Rota wouldn’t be allowed in the chapel. But they could gather outside,” he wrote, saying that he “hugely celebrated” the “small win.”
