Charles, Prince of Wales - Second Marriage

Second Marriage

The engagement of Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles was announced on 10 February 2005; he presented her with an engagement ring which had belonged to his grandmother. The Queen's consent to the marriage (as required by the Royal Marriages Act 1772) was recorded in a Privy Council meeting on 2 March. In Canada, the Department of Justice announced its decision that the Queen's Privy Council for Canada was not required to meet to give its consent to the marriage, as the union would not result in offspring and would have no impact on the succession to the Canadian throne.

Charles is the first member of the Royal Family to have a civil, rather than religious, wedding in England. Government documents from the 1950s and 1960s, published by the BBC, stated that such a marriage was illegal, though these were dismissed by Charles's spokesman, and explained to be obsolete by the sitting government.

The marriage was to take place in a civil ceremony at Windsor Castle, with a subsequent religious blessing at St George's Chapel. However, because a civil marriage at Windsor Castle would oblige the venue to be available to anyone wishing to be married there, the location was changed to Windsor Guildhall. On 4 April the originally scheduled date of 8 April was postponed by one day, to allow Charles and some of the invited dignitaries to attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Charles's parents did not attend the civil marriage ceremony; the Queen's reluctance to attend perhaps arising from her position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh did attend the service of blessing, and held a reception for the newlyweds at Windsor Castle afterwards. A unique feature of the blessing, conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, was the inclusion of the strongest act of penitence from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, have committed by word, thought and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.