King Charles and his wife Queen Camilla are set for a bittersweet weekend together.
The sweet couple, who were married in 2005, will celebrate their 18th wedding anniversary on Sunday – a joyous occasion they are expected to mark privately.
Charles and Camilla tied the knot in a civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall, on 9 April 2005.
Famously, the Queen and her husband Prince Philip were not in attendance; the monarch chose not to go because of her role as head of the Church of England, which discourages divorce.
They did, however, host a reception for the newlyweds at Windsor Castle later that day, showing that they very much approved of the union.
While Sunday will be a cause for great celebration for Charles and Camilla, it will also be tinged with sadness.
Exactly 16 years to the day after their wedding, the King lost his beloved father, Prince Philip.
Philip, who was married to the Queen for 73 years, passed away on 9 April 2021 at the age of 99. the longest-serving royal consort in world history, Philip died peacefully at Windsor Castle. His heartbroken wife was by his side.
Breaking his silence on his father’s death, Charles said the royal family missed him enormously and that Philip would have been amazed at the touching reaction across the world to his death.
“As you can imagine, my family and I miss my father enormously,” said the then-Prince Charles, speaking outside his Highgrove House home in West England.
“My dear papa was a very special person who I think above all else would have been amazed by the reaction and the touching things that have been said about him and from that point of view we are, my family, deeply grateful for all that. It will sustain us in this particular loss and at this particularly sad time.”
