Mike and Zara Tindall will celebrate their 12th wedding anniversary this July, and the couple opted for an unusual venue for their nuptials.
The equestrian and the rugby star tied the knot in a private ceremony at Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh on 30 July 2011, as seen in the video below – just three months after Prince William and Kate Middleton’s Westminster Abbey wedding.
Most royal weddings in recent years have taken place in London or in Windsor, so why did Mike and Zara decide to marry in Scotland?
The couple’s low-key ceremony was not televised with the modest Canongate Kirk church affording them more privacy than that of service at Westminster Abbey or St George’s Chapel.
Reports at the time suggest that the venue was chosen because of the bride’s links to Scotland, with Zara having attended Gordonstoun School in Moray.
Zara’s grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, also used to attend services in the church on some of her frequent visits to Edinburgh.
The Tindalls aren’t the only couple to have married in Scotland – Zara’s mother, Princess Anne, wed her second husband, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, at Crathie Kirk in Aberdeenshire in December 1992.
Around 30 guests attended the couple’s private marriage service. Unlike the Church of England at the time, the Church of Scotland considered marriage to be an ordinance of religion rather than a sacrament and permitted the remarriage of divorced persons under certain circumstances.
