When Princess Beatrice and her fiancé, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, announced their plans to hold a wedding on May 29, it came after the scandal over Prince Andrew’s friendship with the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had already forced them to change the date, a source said to People at the time. Despite the prince’s retirement from public life and the lingering controversy, he still reportedly planned to walk his daughter down the aisle—and give a toast. Ultimately, it was the pandemic that caused them to call the whole thing off, and instead of celebrating together, the rest of the York family is honoring the couple from a distance.
On Friday, Beatrice’s mother, Sarah Ferguson, posted an image of her daughter as a toddler on her Instagram, expressing her excitement to attend a wedding in the future. Ferguson and Andrew have been quarantining together at Royal Lodge, their Windsor home, along with their younger daughter, Princess Eugenie, and her husband, Jack Brooksbank. Earlier this month, Ferguson told a podcast that Beatrice and Mapelli Mozzi were quarantining with his mother.
The wedding was supposed to take place at Chapel Royal, the 150-seat church where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert wed in 1840. Afterward the couple had planned a party at Buckingham Palace, where Kate Middleton and Prince William threw the private reception following their wedding. Though the couple had originally wanted a very low-key affair, Queen Elizabeth reportedly invited them to use the palace to throw a larger reception. Unlike with her sister’s public nuptials in October 2018, news agencies announced as early as January that they would not televise the event. Beatrice and Mapelli Mozzi also decided to forego a traditional carriage procession before the wedding.
Once the coronavirus pushed the entire family to rethink their summer plans in March, Beatrice and Mapelli Mozzi decided to cancel the scheduled Buckingham Palace celebration and hold a ceremony with only family and a few close friends. By mid-April, even that plan was put on hold. “There are no plans to switch venues or hold a bigger wedding. They aren’t even thinking about their wedding at this time,” the couple’s spokesperson said on April 16. “There will come a time to rearrange, but that’s not yet.”