Parents are not always an example. Certainly they are not in the matrimonial field Kitty Spencer, Lady D’s niece married last Saturday at the gates of Rome. The earl’s eldest daughter Charles Spencer, brother of Diana, and of Victoria Lockwood, married the sixty-two-year-old South African billionaire Michael Lewis at Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati. A fairytale day that will hopefully have a better following than that of Charles and Victoria, who for almost twenty years have had an eventful union between quarrels, scandals and betrayals.
It was the 1989 when Diana’s brother, then Viscount Althorp, married Victoria Lockwood, a model with whom he had started dating from only six weeks. A year later Kitty was born, the first of the couple’s four children, followed by the twins Amelia ed Eliza and yes Louis Spencer. By the time Kitty was born, however, the viscounts’ marital problems had already begun. Charles Spencer, as he would later become known, he had cheated on his wife just six months after the wedding. Victoria Lockwood, on the other hand, suffered from anorexia and was trying to get past one heroin addiction which had started in the modeling years in New York.
In 1995 the couple tried to get away from the media spotlight by moving with their four children to South Africa. But the problems follow them there too. The inevitable divorce came in December 1997, after a separation lawsuit that made the tabloids happy.
In one of the sessions of the trial, for example, the Viscountess of Althorp stated that Charles had confessed to her that he had been with a dozen women while she was being treated for detox. The tabloids also came into possession of a letter that the viscount had written to one of his mistresses, Chantal Callopy, and in which she confessed how much it had been cruel to his wife.
Kitty Spencer tried to play down these family dramas. “Sometimes I feel like my family is in The Jerry Springer Show. From the outside, it looks rather dysfunctional, ”he joked in an interview with the magazine a few years ago Hello. “However, every member of my family is part of my happiness».
A happiness that reached its peak on the day of his Roman wedding, “The most important day of my life”, as she wrote posting on Instagram some shots of the wedding and the five dresses designed for her by Dolce & Gabbana.
Certainly, looking at the style, Kitty is just the last of the Spencer dynasty to enchant on the wedding day. Long before her there had been, in addition to her mother Victoria, the mom of Lady Diana, Franches Roche. When on June 1, 1954 he married Viscount Althorp in Westminster Abbey, she wore a gorgeous dress embroidered with crystals with a sweetheart neckline and long sleeves, complemented by her family’s Fermoy tiara. Among the guests the queen Elisabetta, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.
Diana Spencer, then, at 17 was one of the bridesmaids at the wedding of older sister Jane with Robert Fellowes in 1978. Lady Jane launched a trend that the three Spencer sisters would follow: wearing the family tiara on their wedding day. In 1980 it was the turn of Diana’s other sister, Sarah, whom he married Neil McCorquodale in Great Brington, Northamptonshire. The red-haired bride chose a high-neck lace dress, accompanied, of course, by the Spencer tiara.
On wedding “too crowded” (due Camilla of Cornwall) of Diana Spencer with Prince Charles ink fumes were spilled. But when July 29, 1981 was celebrated in St Paul’s Cathedral in London, it seemed the beginning of a fairy tale. The wedding dress stood out. Made of ivory silk taffeta with antique lace, and embroidered with sequins and pearls, it featured a tail of almost eight meters, as well as a veil of 140 meters. Like her sisters, Diana also wore the Spencer tiara.
This leads to the wedding of Kitty Spencer’s parents, Earl Charles and Victoria Lockwood, on September 16, 1989, in the Church of St Mary in Great Brington. Victoria wore a medieval-inspired dress with an elaborate buttoned detail on the front and leather trim at the waist and cuffs, designed by high society couturier Tomasz Starzewski. As per tradition, she was adorned with the Spencer tiara.
Since then, many other “yeses” have been staged in the Spencer clan. For example in 2012 Emily McCorquodale, daughter of Lady Sarah, has married James Hutt while the following year it was Alexander Fellowes, the son of Lady Jane, who married Alexandra Finlay. Then, in 2018, Celia McCorquodale, Emily’s sister, married George Woodhouse in a ceremony that caused a lot of talk, especially due to the presence of two excellent hosts: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, then newly married.
Nshe gallery above the photos of all the weddings of the Spencer dynasty.
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