Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have reportedly walked back the claim they made during their bombshell Oprah interview on March 7 that they married in secret days before their lavish royal wedding ceremony at Windsor Castle.
According to the Sun, a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex issued a correction, saying they did not tie the knot in secret three days before their royal wedding.
The statement said that the ceremony the Sussexes attended at Kensington Palace with Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, was not a marriage ceremony.
The Sussexes only “privately exchanged personal vows a few days before their official/legal wedding on May 19,” the statement concluded.
Markle claimed she and Harry got married three days before their public wedding ceremony
Markle, 39, had claimed during the interview with Oprah that she and Harry, 36, secretly got married three days before their Windsor Castle wedding.
She claimed that she and Harry asked the Archbishop to preside over an exchange of marital vows at a private ceremony that took place at Nottingham Cottage.
“You know, three days before our wedding, we got married. No one knows that,” she said. “The vows that we have framed in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
Markle’s claim that she and Harry married secretly days before their royal wedding left many royal watchers stunned and puzzled because it was the first time that the claim had been made.
The couple’s official wedding certificate shows they married on May 19
The retraction by the Sussexes through a spokesperson comes after the General Register Office released the couple’s official wedding certificate.
The certificate showed that contrary to Markle’s claim, she and Harry exchanged formal marital vows during their royal wedding at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle on May 19, 2018, and not three days earlier as they claimed during the Oprah interview.
The certificate recorded Prince Charles and Markle’s mom, Doria Ragland, as witnesses.
Markle and Harry’s wedding, attended by more than 600 guests, was estimated to have cost British taxpayers £32million ($44 million).
Markle was “clearly misinformed,” registry official said
Stephen Borton, the registry official who helped to draw up Markle and Harry’s marriage certificate, said that Markle was “obviously confused” and “clearly misinformed” about the nature of the ceremony they attended with the Archbishop of Canterbury at Kensington, according to The Sun.
Borton explained that the Archbishop could not have married the couple in Nottingham Cottage because the location was not authorized for that purpose and there were not enough witnesses to make the ceremony valid.
“They did not marry three days earlier in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury,” Borton said. “The Special Licence I helped draw up enabled them to marry at St George’s Chapel in Windsor and what happened there on 19 May 2018 and was seen by millions around the world was the official wedding as recognized by the Church of England and the law.”
Borton explained that what happened at Nottingham Cottage was a private ceremony that may have been a “simple rehearsal.”
“Justin [Archbishop of Canterbury] does not do private weddings. Meghan is an American, she does not understand,” Reverend Edwards, the vicar at St Matthew’s Church, in Dinnington, also said, according to the Daily Mail.