Princely Wedding Preparations and a Troubled Throne: The Nuptials of Prince Gustaf and Princess Margaret (Part 1)

Just as Prince Gustaf, heir to the throne of Sweden and Norway, was preparing to wed a British princess, half of the union decided it was time to break free from the Bernadottes

Earlier this year, I shared the fascinating story of the courtship of King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden and his British bride, Princess Margaret of Connaught. Today, I’m bringing you the first in a two-part series on their royal wedding, which took place 120 years ago this month.

“A Prince came wooing to the shores of England yesterday,” a report from the Western Daily Press trumpeted on May 13, 1905. The platform at Victoria Station had been crowded the day before when Prince Gustaf Adolf, the twenty-two-year-old grandson of the King of Sweden and Norway, stepped off the train that had carried him to London. He was greeted warmly by King Edward VII’s younger brother, the Duke of Connaught, and as well as the Swedish minister and other diplomats from the Swedish and Norwegian legation.

Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden, ca. 1907 (Wikimedia Commons)

The reception wasn’t a purely diplomatic moment, but rather a meeting between a prince and his future father-in-law. The princely wooing had already been done. A few months earlier, during a winter sojourn in Egypt, the Duke’s elder daughter, twenty-three-year-old Princess Margaret of Connaught, had fallen in love with Prince Gustaf. The match delighted both the British and Swedish royal families, with King Edward boisterously announcing the news of the royal engagement during a dinner at Buckingham Palace in February 1905.

The young couple continued their romance as they traveled through Europe, finally parting ways in Paris in April 1905. During the month that followed, Princess Margaret returned with her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, and her sister, Princess Patricia, to England, spending time at their London home, Clarence House, and their country retreat, Bagshot Park. Meanwhile, Prince Gustaf headed home to Stockholm to brief his grandfather, King Oscar II, and his father, Crown Prince Gustaf, about his marriage plans.

Preparations for the nuptials were quickly put in motion. The wedding date was fixed for June in Windsor, with the ceremony scheduled to take place at St. George’s Chapel, where Princess Margaret’s parents had been married three decades earlier. Across the sea in Scandinavia, the legislatures in Sweden and Norway voted to grant the newlyweds a combined income of 150,000 kroner, and the King offered his grandson a summer royal residence, Sofiero, as a wedding gift. Seamstresses were hard at work on Margaret’s trousseau and her wedding gown, which was believed to be one of the first royal wedding dresses made entirely in Paris, though the lace used was sourced from Ireland.