From the royal rift to their first child together we look back on Meghan and Harry’s first year of married life
IT HAS been exactly a year since the world tuned in to witness the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The couple said their I dos on May 19 2018 at St George’s Chapel in Windsor with a guest list of 600 and a television audience of 11.5 million. As they celebrate their first […]
IT HAS been exactly a year since the world tuned in to witness the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
The couple said their I dos on May 19 2018 at St George’s Chapel in Windsor with a guest list of 600 and a television audience of 11.5 million.
As they celebrate their first wedding anniversary, Fabulous Digital takes a look back at their first year of married life.
Integrating into royal life
Meghan was barely given a moment to catch her breath before she was whisked into life as a royal.
Just three days after she and Harry wed she joined her new husband at her first garden party at Buckingham Palace in celebration of Prince Charles’ 70th birthday.
She wasn’t seen again until a few weeks later when she and her new husband attended Trooping the Colour for the second time as a couple.
Five days later the newly minted Duchess established herself as a fully-fledged member of the firm when she attended her first solo engagement with the Queen.
The two women visited Cheshire where they performed several engagements with Meghan appearing to be a hit with her grandmother-in-law who was seen enjoying a joke with the former actress.
Cooking up a storm
September saw Meghan launch her very first solo project, a cookbook supporting victims of the Grenfell fire which saw 72 people lose their lives in the blaze back in 2017.
“Together: Our Community Cookbook” includes a foreword written by Meghan herself.
Alongside Harry and her mum Doria Ragland, Meghan hosted a lunch for those involved in the project at Buckingham Palace.
Bring on the baby
Just ahead of their first royal tour together the couple announced that they were expecting their first baby.
The announcement was made on the Kensington Palace Twitter and Instagram accounts.
It read: “Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are very pleased to announce that The Duchess of Sussex is expecting a baby in the Spring of 2019.
PA
“Their Royal Highnesses have appreciated all of the support they have received from people around the world since their wedding in May and are delighted to be able to share this happy news with the public.”
Mum-to-be overseas
Just a day later the couple travelled to Australia for their first joint tour overseas.
Prince Harry and Meghan performed a total of 50 joint engagements and two solo ones over the two week period which saw them travel across Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand.
The royal rift begins
Rumours of a rift between Meghan and her sister-in-law Kate Middleton began to be reported in November.
The first reports saw royal sources claim that the Duchess of Cambridge has been left in tears during her daughter Princess Charlotte’s dress fitting.
Since then the reports have escalated with Meghan even being dubbed a “diva” among some insiders.
Later reports suggested that it was in fact Harry and his brother William that were at logger heads with royal sources describing their relationship as “tense.”
Move to Windsor
Speculation over the rift was only further fuelled when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced that they would be moving to Windsor in November.
The couple would be leaving their home of Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace to relocate to Frogmore Cottage in the grounds of Windsor Castle.
The move meant they would be moving away from the Cambridges who live in an apartment at Kensinton Palace.
After a host of renovations were made Harry and Meghan made the move in April, shortly before the birth of their son.
The household divides
In March the public was surprised to learn that the Queen had granted permission for Prince William and Prince Harry to split their royal households permanently.
It meant that the Sussexes stepped away from their Kensington Palace, instead basing their official household office at Buckingham Palace, and introduced separate communications team to reflect this move.
#SussexRoyal
The next month saw the couple land their own Instagram account having previously shared theirs with Kate and William.
Sussex Royal was launched on April 2 and has already nearly caught up with the Kensington Palace Instagram account having already amassed 8 million followers compared to Kate and Wills’ 8.8 million.
Harry & Meghan Photo credits: Glenn Harvey (CP), Adrian Dennis (Getty), Chris Jackson (Getty)In fact the couple broke records by reaching one million followers on their account in less than six hours of it being active.
Introducing Archie Harrison
The couple welcomed their firstborn on May 6 at 5:26am, with their son weighing 7lb 3oz.
The new parents first introduced their son to the public just two days later at a press call at St George’s Hall where Meghan described him as having the “sweetest temperament.”
New mum Meghan described the experience as “magic” adding “I have the two best guys in the world, so I’m really happy.”
The couple later announced that they would be naming their baby Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor.
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In other royal news, we revealed how Meghan has been described as a “princess of the UK” on Archie’s birth certificate.
And it was revealed that Meghan gave Archie the middle name Harrison as a “tribute to her favourite Beatle”.
His moniker is also believed to be a tribute to Princess Diana, who has an ancestor called Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll.
And we exclusively revealed how Meghan and Harry named Archie after army hero and the Duke’s mentor who got him deployed in Afghanistan.