On the highly emotional day, the royal bride-to-be had to manage someone else's feelings instead of her own.
Published on June 12, 2025 11:01AM
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Key Takeaways
- Princess Diana and King Charles were married on July 29, 1981. On the big day, the bride's mother, Frances, was reportedly crying and said she couldn't cope with the pressure.
- Diana was reportedly "terribly let down" by her behavior.
- Frances was said to be "hurt" by being left out of the pre-wedding planning.
The wedding day is an inherently emotional one, and while the goal is for it to be an overwhelmingly happy experience for everyone involved, busy schedules and a pressure for everything to be perfect can sometimes lead to couples and their wedding parties feeling a high level of stress. All of this is true for royal weddings, too. According to Marie Claire, when Princess Diana and King Charles were married on July 29, 1981, emotions were running high for everyone involved. Ultimately, the bride-to-be was left feeling disappointed in a key player, who made the big day less about the bride and groom and more about themselves.
In the biography Diana: Her True Story—In Her Own Words, author Andrew Morton noted that Princess Diana felt "let down terribly" by her own mother, Frances Shand-Kydd. "She kept crying and being all valiant and saying that she couldn't cope with the pressure, I tended to think I was the one under pressure because I was the bride," the bride said, per Morton.
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Frances also reportedly began taking anti-anxiety medication in the months leading up to Diana's wedding, citing that the "stress" she was feeling related to her daughter's nuptials to then-Prince Charles had made it a necessity.
As it turns out, Princess Diana's mother might have been upset by more than just the stress of the big day. According to Morton, Frances had voiced to Diana that she was "hurt" over being left out of the pre-wedding preparation. We know that royal weddings of this scale are largely subject to oversight from the reigning monarch, so it stands to reason that Frances might have been jealous that Queen Elizabeth, the groom's mother, had more influence over the wedding than she did as the bride's mom.
Diana and her mother had a somewhat tenuous relationship over the years. According to Morton's accounts, Diana and her brother, Charles, lived with their father after their parents divorced, and the experience was one that "devastated" the future royal, Marie Claire reports. The Daily Mail notes that Frances then moved to Scotland to live with her new husband instead of remaining close to her children. "While she was packing her stuff to leave, she promised Diana she’d come back to see her. Diana used to wait on the doorstep for her, but she never came," Diana's brother once said.
