This weekend marks 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II on the throne with Platinum Jubilee celebrations set to take place across the country.
However, the Queen will not be marking the event with her beloved husband Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, after he passed last year.
The Queen once described her husband as her ‘strength and stay’.
Before Philip’s death in April 2021, the pair were inseparable and attended hundreds of events together every year.
But when did Her Majesty and Prince Philip marry, and what did their wedding day look like?
The Queen was said to have first fallen for Philip when she was a teenager, back in 1939.
The distant cousins had been at the same gatherings before, but had their first publicised and pivotal meeting at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, Devon, in July of that year when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited with their two daughters.
Philip, who was 18 at the time, caught Elizabeth’s eye as he entertained her by jumping over tennis nets.
‘This was the man with whom Princess Elizabeth had been in love from their first meeting,’ the king’s official biographer Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, later said.
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Queen Elizabeth II and Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, were married on November 20, 1947.
That means that they were married for 73 years at the time of Philip’s death.
Together they had four children – Charles, Anne, Andrew, and Edward – and welcomed eight grandchildren into the world as well as 12 great-grandchildren.
Together they also celebrated the Silver, Golden and Diamond Jubilees of the Queen’s reign.
On their golden wedding anniversary in 1997, the Queen touchingly said of Philip: ‘He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years.’
They celebrated their platinum wedding anniversary, marking 70 years together, in 2017.
The wedding took place at Westminster Abbey – Elizabeth was the tenth royal to get married there.
On April 26, 1923, her parents King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were also married at the Abbey.
The first Royal wedding to take place in there was on November 11, 1100, when King Henry I married Princess Matilda of Scotland.
The Queen’s wedding dress was designed by the court designer of the day, Norman Hartnell – who was famous for his embroidery.
He took his inspiration from flowers such as jasmine for the design on her dress, which was made of ivory silk with a floral design and decorated with crystals and 10,000 seed pearls.
Despite being heir apparent at the time, the Queen still had to buy her wedding dress with ration coupons.
Hundreds of members of the public sent Elizabeth their coupons to help her buy the dress, although it was not legal for her to use them so they were returned – with the government instead donating 200 coupons to help her.
A lot of speculation surrounded her dress at the time and it’s understood she was worried that if the details leaked, fashion houses might copy it and she would therefore find it difficult to make last-minute alterations.
The Queen also suffered a last-minute hiccup when her tiara famously snapped on the morning of her wedding as she got ready at Buckingham Palace.
The court jeweler was summed and had to be rushed to his work room by police escort, in order to fix it in time for the ceremony.
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The couple were married by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, and the Archbishop of York, Cyril Garbett, with the ceremony broadcast to 200m people around the world on BBC Radio.
Elizabeth had eight bridesmaids including her sister Princess Margaret and two page boys including Prince Michael of Kent while the Marquess of Milford Haven – Prince Philip’s maternal first cousin – was the best man.
Philip also renounced his Greek and Danish titles on the day of the wedding, when he officially became the Duke Of Edinburgh.
After they were married Elizabeth and Philip went to Buckingham Palace, where the newly-weds waved to the crowds from the balcony.
The wedding breakfast took place in the Ball-Supper Room of the Palace, with the menu including Filet de Sole Mountbatten, Perdreau en Casserole, and Bombe Glacee Princess Elizabeth.
Their wedding cake, meanwhile, made by London bakery McVitie and Price, was a nine-foot high four-tier fruitcake, which weighed around 500lbs, and included 80 oranges, 660 eggs and over three gallons of Navy Rum.
With rationing still in place following the end of World War II, many of the ingredients had had to be shipped in from overseas – giving it the nickname ‘The 10,000 Mile Cake.’
The couple chose to honeymoon in the UK.
They first stayed at Broadlands House in Hampshire, which was owned by Prince Philip’s uncle Lord Mountbatten, staying in an 18th Century lodge.
From there they went on to Birkhall in Scotland – part of the Balmoral Estate, where the Queen grew up.
However they also had a second honeymoon on their 70th anniversary, taking a trip to Malta to mark the happy occasion.
The couple were stationed there for two years after they were married.
MORE : Here’s everything you should watch on TV this Platinum Jubilee weekend
MORE : Royals appear on balcony for flypast to celebrate Platinum Jubilee
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