A snowstorm was buffeting Romsey Abbey as the royal family celebrated the wedding of David Hicks and Lady Pamela Mountbatten on this day 66 years ago. While it made for a picturesque recessional, the wintry weather also got their honeymoon off to a tricky start. The bride (a lady-in-waiting for Queen Elizabeth II) and groom (a “common” designer with the right royal address book), set off in a sports car on their way to Southampton and the West Indies, but unfortunately, as their daughter, India Hicks, recounted in a book last year, the windshield wipers “could not cope.”
“Neither could my father,” India continued, “who stopped the car, leapt out in a rage, and tore them off!” As a result, Lady Pamela was forced to brush the snow off the windows with her bare hands. It was, India surmised, “the beginning of a complicated marriage between two people who adored each other.”
The wedding of Lady Pamela Mountbatten–daughter of the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Edwina, Countess Mountbatten–to David Hicks had caused great furore among the press. He, after all, was a commoner, and she was the late Queen’s third cousin who had spent her life in the rarefied air of royal circles. The pair had met at a party in London, but when Lady Pamela arrived at his house in South Eaton Place, David thought that her pink and blue car was the “ugliest car” he had ever seen, according to India Hicks.
Fortunately, Lady Pamela learned to park away from his house on their future dates, and David was no stranger to royal life. As an interior designer, his clientele was made up of the elite, wrote the Daily Mail after the announcement of the wedding. “Certainly it will raise no difficulties in his relationships with his clients,” the report read of the nuptials, according to Tatler. “For he has discreetly acquired a considerable social standing of his own. His financial position? Mr Hick’s services are expensive. Very expensive.”
To see photographs of the wedding itself is like looking back through a royal history book. After spending Christmas with the Mountbattens at their family home in Hampshire, the pair tied the knot on January. 13 While they married at Romsey Abbey, David and Lady Pamela ensured the Grade II-listed manor took pride of place on the big day–as the 140-lb. wedding cake.
The bride, now Lady Pamela Hicks, wore a white satin gown by Worth, which featured white fur as a nod to the winter wedding. Atop her head was the Mountbatten Pearl and Diamond tiara, loaned to her by her mother for the occasion. The provenance of the Belle Epoque style piece is unknown, but The Royal Watcher surmises that it must have originated around 1901, as a wedding gift for Countess Mountbatten’s own mother, Amalia Mary Maud Cassel, when she married Wilfried Ashley.
Lady Pamela wore the tiara for some of the nation’s most historic moments, including the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the following Commonwealth tour, which she recalled being a tiring experience, especially “donning an evening dress and tiara at 10 in the morning.”
On her wedding day, Pamela Hicks was accompanied by a host of royals–though her friend, Queen Elizabeth II, could not attend, as she was heavily pregnant with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor at the time. Queen Louise of Sweden and Prince Philip joined the congregation, as did the Queen Mother (who wore a brooch belonging to Queen Victoria), Princess Alice, Princess Marina, Princess Alexandra of Kent, Princess Sophie of Greece and Hanover, and Penelope Knatchbull. Alongside them were a young Prince Charles and Princess Anne, then aged just 11 and 10 respectively.
The newlyweds would go on to welcome three children–Edwina, a goddaughter of Queen Elizabeth; Ashley, a godson of Prince Philip, and India, a goddaughter of King Charles who served as a bridesmaid at his wedding to Princess Diana–and raised their family at home in the Chilterns. The Hickses continued to serve a crucial role as pillars of support for the late Queen and the royal family for decades to come, and David and Lady Pamela spent 38 years together before David passed away on March 29, 1998.
Originally published in Tatler.
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