25 May 2024 , 10:42
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When Charles - then Prince of Wales - married a 20-year-old Diana Spencer it seemed like the start of a fairytale, but as relations between the two deteriorated, over the years it became clear that behind closed doors their marriage had been anything but a storybook romance.
Millions of people watched Diana and Charles tied the knot in a lavish ceremony at St Paul's Cathedral attended by the great and the good - and no detail was too small when it came to planning the royal wedding, which was estimated to have cost £57 million. However, there was one particular aspect of the planning that 'Charles wasn't happy' about and had to be swiftly altered.
The detail in question was none other than one of the centrepieces of any wedding day: the cake. The chef in charge of creating the couple's wedding cake - Daniel Avery - admitted in a documentary entitled Wedding of the Century that whilst Diana had happily signed off on his design, Charles was not a fan and wanted to make some tweaks.
Chief petty officer cook David Avery with the royal wedding cake made for Prince Charles and Princess Diana's wedding, 29th July 1981 (Getty)"I met Diana at Buckingham Palace to show her the design, she was so nice, I was apprehensive, but that's what she said to me, 'I was apprehensive of meeting you and it's been a pleasure'. She said all she wanted was a wedding cake, she didn't want a monument. Diana had seen the plan, everything was fine and then we got a phone call, Prince Charles wasn't happy.
"All it was, is that they used to name him the red dragon. I had to put the crest of the red dragon on the front of the cake, that was the only change from everything we had designed." Avery explained, as reported in Yahoo Style UK.
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His final creation was a fruit cake over 5 feet high and made up of five tiers, the bottom of which was so large that it took a whopping 12 hours to make. Whilst Charles had been unhappy with the design and requested a change, Avery claimed that on a previous occasion ahead of the wedding the royal had tried one of his creations and enjoyed it.
Avery added: "I met Prince Charles when he was on Bulwark (a Navy ship) and they wanted a commissioning cake maker, and Prince Charles cut the cake. He pointed to me and he said 'Have you made this? Beautiful cake', so I was pleased with that."
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