India Hicks loved every minute of being a bridesmaid at a royal wedding … well, almost every minute.
The second cousin and goddaughter of Prince Charles was a bridesmaid in his wedding to Princess Diana in July 1981 when she was 12 years old. As you can imagine, a situation like that sticks out in your memory, so she recently opened up about the experience.
In an interview with Insider, India revealed she wasn't too thrilled about the gig initially because she hated the dresses they had to wear. "It was a time and place and a moment in fashion in the 1980s. So it was voluptuous and over the top, and drama everywhere," she recalled.
India understood why the dress was picked, but she personally dreaded it.
"So I understand that those dresses were so befitting to the era," she shared.
"However, if you were a tomboy like me … when you are asked to be a bridesmaid, you are proud and delighted, but you are a little alarmed at being asked to wear a frilly dress, as you can imagine."
"Looking back, it's incredible to think of how historical that wedding was," India said.
"I think at the time, everybody thought it was this fairytale — nobody understood what was to come."
"I felt hugely proud that I was part of it, but you know, afterwards my mother said to me, 'Right, that is that, and now it's back to your normal life,'" she noted.
India, who is a designer and writer, also touched on her royal wedding experience in her 2015 book, India Hicks: Island Style. The bridesmaids wore their hair down with flower crowns, but India still called it "one of my worst hair days ever."
India eventually enjoyed her own wedding. She and her partner of 26 years, David Flint Wood, were married in 2021. He first proposed when she learned she was pregnant with son Felix, the oldest of their five children, but she declined.
"In my mind, I was saying, 'I'm a strong, independent woman! I don't need to get married!'" she told Brides.
"Which is what I said for 26 years, until suddenly I didn't."
"What's interesting is, when you fall in love at 19 or 20, you have a very different perception of what love is to when you're 54, and you think of love more as long term," she shared of the experience.
"Today, David and I have very busy lives with a lot of projects, a lot of children, and a lot of complications. In the madness of what's been an unexpected journey, our wedding felt like we had a few weeks where life became very simple. It was a deeply special and memorable time for us as a family."
