Princess Diana's Wedding Was a Fairy Tale for Others, but the 'Worst Day' for Her: 'Won't be Queen'

Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s wedding in 1981 was like a fairy tale and lots of people around the world watched it. But behind the scenes, Diana wasn’t happy at all. She later said that her wedding day was the 'worst day of my life.' The way they got together was quick and not usual. Diana told biographer Andrew Morton that she and Charles had only met 13 times before he proposed. She was only 19 when the 32-year-old prince asked her to marry him.

Diana recalled the proposal with a mix of surprise and uncertainty. "I went to Windsor and I arrived about 5 o'clock and he sat me down and said: 'I've missed you so much.' But there was never anything tactile about him," she told Morton. The proposal came as a shock to Diana. "Anyway, so he said: 'Will you marry me?' and I laughed. I remember thinking: 'This is a joke,' and I said: 'Yeah, OK,' and laughed." But Charles was serious. Diana remembered the moment reality set in: "He was deadly serious. He said: 'You do realize that one day you will be Queen.' And a voice said to me inside: 'You won't be Queen but you'll have a tough role,'" as per Today. 

Diana's lack of relationship experience left her unprepared for such a momentous decision. "I didn't have anything to go by because I had never had a boyfriend. I'd always kept them away, thought they were all trouble – and I couldn't handle it emotionally." Still, Diana recalled saying, "I love you so much, I love you so much," to which Charles replied, "Whatever love means."

As the wedding day approached, Diana's doubts grew stronger. She even considered calling off the wedding at one point. Royal author Ingrid Seward claimed in her book My Mother And I that Diana told her father she no longer wanted to marry Charles after a disappointing encounter at Prince Andrew's 21st birthday party. According to Seward, "She was distraught, flustered, angry, and had no intention of ever going back. As far as Diana was concerned, the Royal Wedding was off," as per The Mirror. 

However, Diana's dad talked her into going ahead with the marriage. The push to do her royal duty was stronger than her own doubts. On July 29, 1981, Diana walked down the aisle of St. Paul's Cathedral. To the world, it seemed like a happy event. But years later, Diana shared how she really felt about that day. In the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words, she said, "I can't marry him. I can't do this. This is unbelievable."

The wedding was grand but it was the start of a tough marriage for Diana. She felt unready for the pressures of royal life and had a hard time with how distant Charles was. Things got even worse because Charles was still emotionally tied to Camilla Parker Bowles. When Diana thought about her wedding day later, she didn’t hold back her feelings. She called it the 'worst day of my life' and said she felt like a 'lamb to the slaughter.'