A Look Back at Camilla’s First Marriage to Andrew Parker Bowles—And Her Elaborate Wedding Dress

On July 4, 1973, almost exactly half a century ago at the Guards Chapel in Wellington Barracks, London, Captain Andrew Parker Bowles and Camilla Shand were married in front of 800 guests. Needless to say, it was the most talked-about social ceremony of that infamously hot British summer.

Both newlyweds had close ties to the royal family: Andrew Parker Bowles’s parents were friends of the Queen Mother, and he had served as a page at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She, on the other hand, was already romantically linked to the then-Prince Charles at the time. (In 2005, she would eventually marry Charles, and in 2022, officially became Queen Consort following the death of the late Queen Elizabeth.) 

For her first wedding to Andrew Parker Bowles, Camilla wore a white gown with a bias-cut ruffle neckline and wide balloon sleeves of silk voile, embellished with a mini voile that echoed the pattern of the neckline. On her head, she wore a wide, foot-length white veil, which was adorned with the Cubitt-Shand tiara, sometimes referred to as the Cubitt tiara. The diamond-encrusted piece was added to Camilla’s family collection by her grandmother, Sonia Keppel Cubitt, which was then passed down by her daughter Rosalind Shand (Camilla’s mother). Years later, it was worn by Camilla’s daughter Laura when she exchanged vows with Harry Lopes in 2006.

Andrew Parker Bowles—a British Army officer who would rise to the rank of brigadier—first met Camilla in the late 1960s, although the couple did not announce their engagement until 1973. On July 4 of that year, the two were married in a Roman Catholic ceremony, followed by a reception at St. James’s Palace. Among the guests were the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, and Princess Anne. (The wedding was depicted in the third season of The Crown by Netflix.)

Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles remained married until 1995, a period during which they lived at Middlewick House, a Georgian-style home in Wiltshire. Together they had two children: food writer Tom Parker Bowles (born in 1974, and one of King Charles’s godsons), and art curator Laura Lopes (born in 1978). They also share five grandchildren: Lola and Freddy Parker Bowles, and Eliza, Louis, and Gus Lopes. Freddy, Louis, and Gus were among the eight pages of honor at the coronation of King Charles III.

Having always harbored a love for Charles, in 1995—at the height of the public and official breakup between the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana—Camilla divorced Andrew and bought a private country house called Ray Mill House in Wiltshire, just 15 minutes from her beloved Charles’s home in Highgrove. Andrew quickly remarried, in 1996, to Rosemary Pitman (who died in 2010 of cancer) while Camilla (who attended Pitman’s funeral, in the same church where she married Andrew) waited until 2005 to finally marry Charles.

Despite their divorce, Andrew and Camilla still maintain a friendly relationship to this day. Indeed, on May 6 of this year, the Queen’s first husband was among the guests who gathered at Westminster Abbey for the coronation of King Charles III, a presence that reflected his prominent place within royal circles as well as his enduring friendship with his first wife. In October 2022, a listing in the court circular revealed that Andrew had represented the then-Queen Consort at the funeral of John Bowes-Lyon, the king’s third cousin. They were most recently pictured together on June 21, 2023, at Royal Ascot, where Andrew and Camilla greeted each other warmly.