Queen Elizabeth II’s marriage to the Duke of Edinburgh was one of the most enduring royal relationships in British history, and the celebrations of their 50th and 60th wedding anniversaries in 1997 and 2007 brought out some gorgeous royal jewels.
We remember 1997 primarily as the year that the world lost Diana, Princess of Wales, but it was also the year that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. That June, they hosted a special garden party at Buckingham Palace, which was attended by other couples also celebrating 50 years of marriage.
On November 20, 1997, the couple returned to Westminster Abbey, where they had married exactly 50 years earlier, for a service celebrating their landmark anniversary.
After the service, the Queen and the Duke greeted well-wishers who had gathered near the Abbey during the service.
The Queen wore blue for the anniversary service, including a hat trimmed with the same brightly-printed fabric as her dress.
She accessorized with her signature pearls, plus one of the most significant brooches in her jewelry box: the Cullinan V Brooch.
In fact, the Queen also wore the same brooch for that June 1997 garden party, too. The Cullinan V is a perfect brooch for celebrating marriage, with its central 18.8-carat heart-shaped diamond and intricate platinum setting. The diamond was placed in this brooch setting under the supervision of the late Queen’s grandmother, Queen Mary.
The Queen inherited the brooch from Queen Mary in 1953. It was one of her very most worn brooches, and it also appeared at important family events, including the wedding of Princess Eugenie in 2018.
Ten years later, Philip and Elizabeth celebrated another remarkable milestone: their diamond wedding anniversary. To mark 60 years of marriage, they posed for special portraits that recalled images taken during their honeymoon in November 1947.
The original images, taken at Broadlands, are iconic. In both the 1947 and 2007 portraits, the Queen wore the Sapphire Chrysanthemum Brooch.
On November 18, 2007, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall threw a special anniversary dinner for his parents at Clarence House in London. The dinner was attended by all of the Queen’s children and their children. For the occasion, she wore loads of diamonds—including Queen Mary’s Diamond Frame Earrings and the King Khalid Necklace—and, sentimentally, the gold bracelet designed by Philip to celebrate their fifth anniversary in 1952.
The following day, the royal family attended another service of thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey to mark the diamond anniversary.
With her pearls, the Queen wore a special brooch inherited from her mother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. It’s one of the ruby and diamond floral clips made for the Queen Mum by Cartier in the 1940s. A lovely remembrance of the time period of the royal wedding, and of a much-missed mother. The days of the late 1940s were also on the mind of Elizabeth and Philip, who departed shortly after the service for a trip to Malta, where they had spent so much happy time in the early years of their marriage.
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