Today is the 70th wedding anniversary of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier. The press dubbed it, "The Wedding of the Century"; Grace called it "the Carnival of the Century". It was surely the first multi-media press event on a modern scale.
Exactly a week earlier, on 12 April 1956, the bride had arrived, on the SS Constitution, with an entourage of 66 and 80 pieces of luggage. 20,000 of the principality’s 23,000 subjects were there to greet her.
The Guardian's special correspondent was not particularly impressed by Monaco in 1956: "Where then, in all this, was the gamblers’ Monaco, the Edwardian face of opulence and dissipation ? The answer seems to be - where most of the Edwardians now are. Look at the Casino, more like a Bloomsbury Turkish bath than anyone’s dream of vice; look at the extremely ordinary crowd which it has housed in these days..... But the worst I can say of Monaco is that it is plainly non-U."
Some 1,500 reporters swooped into the three hundred and seventy-five acres of what one of them called a "rococo confectionery principality". Some were plotting to enter the cathedral disguised as priests. One of the New York Times's correspondents, Jane Cianferra, saw the irony: Rainier’s ancestors had taken Monaco in 1297 by infiltrating its fortress disguised as Franciscan friars.
Alluding to Monaco’s reputation as a light-fingered fairyland, Art Buchwald quipped on behalf of the crooks, "I know we all can’t get into the wedding, but since the Prince is allowing the photographers to pool their work, all we ask is that one pool jewel thief be allowed into the ceremony and steal for all of us."
At the civil ceremony the day before, the bride's new titles (matching Rainier’s) were recited - twice a prince, five dukedoms, three marquessates, five times a count. So Grace left the Salle du Trône of the Prince's Palace burdened as Duchesse de Mayenne, Princesse de Chiteâu-Porcien and 140 other titles.
Her trousseau included twelve costumes from High Society, courtesy of MGM whose designer Helen Rose also made the wedding dress. It took six weeks and thirty (mainly studio) seamstresses working with 25 yards of peau de soie, 25 yards of silk taffeta, 100 yards of silk net, 300 yards of 250-year-old Brussels lace, and thousands of hand-sewn pearls.
Despite refusals from some sniffy European royal houses -indisposed? (most of them, in any case, deposed) - there were 600 guests at St Nicholas Cathedral on 19 April 1956, The Feast Day of St Expeditus. Among them Cary Grant, Aristotle Onassis, Gloria Swanson, Ava Gardner, the Aga Khan, Gloria Guinness, Helena Rubenstein & a television audience of 30 million.
The father of the bride, John Kelly, described it as "a grand production. I felt I was in Hollywood watching them shoot a Cecil B. deMille film."
President Eisenhower sent hotelier, Conrad Hilton, as his personal representative. Poor Mr. Hilton had departed without his passport. Associated Press reported he had left it “at a hotel."
The bride eschewed a giant bouquet for a prayer book & some smaller lilies of the valley, which she later placed in the chapel of Sainte Devote, Monaco’s patron saint. Grace, a picture ‘of great loveliness’, proved the bride for all ages; with a voice to match: "a silver-spoon delicacy--slightly British - and the stirring lilt of afternoon tea at the Connaught."
Conrad Hilton confided, “The most impressive thing was the way Grace just said that ‘Oui'"
It was unfortunate that the crowning report from America's 'First Lady of the Press', Inez Robb, fell victim to a typo: "Mr. Portanier [the judge who officiated] turned to [the groom] and asked, "May I, very respectfully, ask Your Serene Highness if he agrees to take as his wife and legitimate spouse Mlle. Grace Patricia Kelly, here present.’
“‘Qui,’ said Prince Rainier."
Vanity Fair’s Laura Jacobs summed up the event very cleverly: It embodied ‘the wedding-cake ideal of postwar, fifties culture, with its emphasis on fairy-tale fertility & prosperity. The little principality of Monaco was stepped like a wedding cake, and its palace was as pink as a petit four. Even bartenders toasted the event, serving a new drink called the Princesse Cocktail: equal parts bourbon, grenadine & fresh cream’
Grace became pregnant on her honeymoon – later hiding her condition with a Hermes’ Sac à main de Voyage (20 years later it was christened The Kelly Bag). Their child - the beautiful Caroline - would secure the Grimaldi succession in Monaco and hence its independence from France.
Rainier was the first man in Grace's life of whom her parents approved. Her biographer, Robert Lacey, believes that the couple fell genuinely in love. At least they genuinely believed they did, although Grace had no idea what she was getting into. "What she did was escape from one starchy, disapproving, tradition-tight environment, become her own woman for 8 or 9 years, and then dive head first into another."
In March 1981, twenty-five years after that wedding (and just 18 months before her death), a beaming, still-magnificent Grace attended a charity concert at Goldsmiths’ Hall with another young beauty betrothed to a prince. A fortnight after her betrothal, Diana Spencer, made a spectacular splash in all her full-blossomed glory in a black taffeta gown by the Emmanuels (“What a mighty feast to set before a King” cracked Lady Diana Cooper.) As cameras clicked and furiously flashed (a presage of things to come), Grace reassured the startled bride-to-be, "Don't worry, dear. It’ll only get worse."
Mark McGinness
19 April 2026
