Four years later, and we are still finding out new details about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s infamous royal wedding, which took place on May 19th in 2018. The latest allegation, which can be found in Tina Brown’s bombshell new book, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, the Truth and the Turmoil, claims that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex almost used the wedding as a sort of networking event, and invited A-list celebrities they didn’t even know to their nuptials in order to make high profile friends. Wow!
Some of the high-profile guests included Priyanka Chopra, Serena Williams, David and Victoria Beckham, Elton John, and many of Meghan’s Suits co-workers. But Brown writes that “the celebrity guests were a portrait not of Meghan’s intimate circle but of the friends she most wanted to recruit” into her inner circle, and their attendance at the wedding was reportedly how she got connected to Oprah Winfrey.
View this post on Instagram
One of the most A-list Hollywood couples at the royal wedding undoubtedly had to be George and Amal Clooney – and Amal almost stole the show in a stunning yellow Stella McCartney dress! – while Oprah, who Meghan reportedly barely knew at the time, had one of the best seats in the house! “Oprah, whom Meghan had scarcely met, if at all, was seated in prime pew real estate opposite the Queen,” Brown wrote about the somewhat questionable seating arrangements.
“Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who floated up the steps of the chapel in a stunning liquid yellow dress and wide-brimmed tea-tray hat, was seated with the debonair George opposite Princess Margaret’s son, Viscount Linley,” Brown added, before revealing that when the Clooneys were asked by Princess Diana’s former roommate how they knew the bride and groom, they allegedly replied, “We don’t.”
Harry and Meghan's plan clearly worked though, as they now count some of the aforementioned A-listers as their close friends; in particular, the Clooneys, who they reportedly vacationed with at their Italian villa in Lake Como shortly after the royal wedding!
"Meghan and Amal spent a lot of time relaxing by the pool and playing with the twins while George and Harry checked out George’s motorbike collection. Harry took one of them out with one of his protection officers," Carolyn Durand and Omid Scobie wrote in the 2020 book, Finding Freedom. And let's not forget that Harry and Meghan also count Winfrey as one of their close friends too, especially as she is also their neighbor in the exclusive Montecito area of Santa Barbara in California.
