750 Million People Watched the Wedding — The Documented Record of What Followed

What actually happened

The Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer announced their engagement on 24 February 1981 and married at St Paul's Cathedral on 29 July 1981. The separation was announced to the House of Commons on 9 December 1992, and the divorce was finalised on 28 August 1996. Diana died in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997.

The dated record

1. 24 February 1981

   The engagement is announced. In the televised interview, asked if they are in love, Charles replies: 'Whatever in love means.'

2. 29 July 1981

   The wedding at St Paul's Cathedral, watched by an estimated global television audience of 750 million.

3. 1982 and 1984

   Prince William and Prince Harry are born.

4. 9 December 1992

   Prime Minister John Major announces the separation to the House of Commons. It is recorded in Hansard.

5. 29 June 1994

   Charles gives a televised interview in which he confirms he was unfaithful after the marriage had 'irretrievably broken down'.

6. 20 November 1995

   Diana gives the BBC Panorama interview, including the line about there being 'three of us in this marriage'.

7. 28 August 1996

   The divorce is finalised.

8. 31 August 1997

   Diana dies in a car crash in Paris, aged 36.

9. 20 May 2021

   The Dyson report concludes the 1995 interview was obtained by deceitful means; the BBC apologises and returns awards.

Established beyond dispute

• PUBLIC RECORD: the separation announcement of 9 December 1992 is in the parliamentary record.
• CONFIRMED / ADMITTED: Charles's own 1994 televised admission of infidelity after the marriage had broken down.
• CONFIRMED: Diana's 1995 Panorama interview, in her own words, on the record.
• PUBLIC RECORD: the 2021 Dyson report's finding that the Panorama interview was obtained by deception — a finding about the journalism, not about what Diana said in it.

In their own words

“There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”

Charles's 1994 interview with Jonathan Dimbleby is the other primary text. He did not dispute infidelity; he framed the timing. Both interviews are the couple's own accounts and are the closest thing to first-hand testimony in the entire story.

Why the 1995 interview is the hardest item in the file

The Panorama interview sits in an unusual category. What Diana said in it is her own testimony, given in her own voice, and it stands. How the interview was obtained does not: an internal BBC investigation reported in 2021 that the journalist had used faked bank statements to help secure the introduction, and the corporation apologised and returned awards.

Those two findings pull in opposite directions and both are on the record. It is a case where the ordinary shorthand — 'the interview was discredited' — is simply wrong. The reporting practice was discredited. The interviewee's account of her own marriage was not adjudicated by anybody, and the Dyson report did not attempt to.

Continue reading · What happened next?Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: The Love Affair That Became a Legend — What Happened Next?Their love story began on the set of Cleopatra and produced two marriages, two divorces, eleven films and a correspondence that outlived them both. Here is the documented sequence — and what happened after the second divorce.

What we cannot confirm

Everything sourced to unnamed courtiers and biographers about who did what first remains REPORTED. The Dyson report established how one interview was obtained; it did not adjudicate the marriage.

That covers a great deal of what is routinely presented as established history, including most claims about private conversations, alleged ultimatums, and the sequence of events inside the households. Where no participant has said it on the record and no document records it, we do not print it as fact.

The aftermath

Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles in a civil ceremony on 9 April 2005. He acceded to the throne on 8 September 2022 and was crowned on 6 May 2023.

What became of them

Charles III is the reigning monarch. Diana died in 1997; the Diana Award, established in her memory in 1999, remains active. Both sons have spoken publicly and at length about the aftermath.

RelatedThe next royal departure, documented the same way