While Meghan Markle and Prince Harry tied the knot in a lavish public wedding spectacle in the U.K. on May 19, 2018, the couple was actually married three days prior to the royal nuptials playing out on TV around the world to millions. During a CBS interview with Oprah Winfrey on Sunday night, Markle made the revelation to Oprah Winfrey, admitting she went into the marriage “naively,” nor did not know much of the royal family’s inner workings.
Markle and Harry tied the knot in their backyard, with the Archbishop of Canterbury officiating the wedding, she told Winfrey, notes PEOPLE. She went on to call the public wedding ceremony at St. George’s Chapel on Windsor Castle an “out of body experience” that she was “very present” for.
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“That’s the only way I can describe it because the night before I slept through the night entirely, which in and of itself is a bit of a miracle,” Markle continued. “And then woke up and started listening to that song ‘Going to the Chapel.’ And just tried to make it fun and light and remind ourselves that this was our day — but I think we were both really aware, even in advance of that just, this wasn’t our day. This was the day that was planned for the world.”
Going into the wedding, the Duchess of Sussex did not know too much about the royal family. “It wasn’t a part of the conversation at home,” Markle, who was born in Los Angeles, said. “It wasn’t something that we followed.
The news that Harry and Markle got married privately before the big public ceremony shocked some on social media, considering how much the public ceremony cost. The wedding reportedly cost $45 million. Prince William and Kate Middleton’s reportedly cost $34 million in 2011. While the royal family did pay the bill for part of it, U.K. taxpayers paid the bill on security, The Independent reported. Security costs were estimated at over £30 million, about $41.4 million.
Elsewhere, Harry told Winfrey that the royal family cut them off financially in early 2020 when they said they would step back from official royal duties. The contracts to develop projects for Spotify and Netflix were “never part of the plan” originally and relied on what Princess Diana left Harry to move to California. “I’ve got all my mum left me. And without that, we would not have been able to do this,” he said. “She saw it coming and I certainly felt her presence throughout this whole process.”
