When Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips in November 1973, the newlyweds spent part of their honeymoon aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, a 412-foot vessel whose cabins were furnished exclusively with single beds. According to HELLO!, the couple, then touring the West Indies, are reported to have had their twin beds lashed together to solve the problem.
The detail, resurfaced by the magazine in October 2026, offers an oddly revealing glimpse into the collision between the rituals of the British monarchy and the practicalities of life on a naval vessel. Even a princess on her honeymoon, it turns out, must negotiate the furniture.
A ship built for protocol, not romance
Built to serve as a floating residence and diplomatic platform, Britannia reflected the customs of the royal household it carried. Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh kept separate bedrooms on board, as they did in their other residences, and every cabin on the yacht was fitted with single beds. As HELLO! notes, this arrangement presented difficulties when the vessel was pressed into service for honeymoons.
Princess Anne's choice of the yacht was itself a nod to her husband's career. Mark Phillips was a captain in the Army, but the couple travelled to Scotland after their wedding at Westminster Abbey to board the ship. Their West Indies tour followed in 1973, and it was there, according to the account cited by HELLO!, that the twin beds were roped together.
Later royal honeymooners handled the inconvenience differently. When the then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana sailed on Britannia in 1981, they reportedly had a double bed brought on board, as did Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson in 1986. The yacht, decommissioned in 1997 and now moored in Edinburgh as a visitor attraction, has since hosted more sentimental connections to the family: Zara Tindall, Anne's daughter, held her pre-wedding party there with Mike Tindall in 2011.
Two marriages, two very different weddings
The first marriage lasted 18 years and ended in divorce in April 1992. The collapse of the union was one of several royal marital breakdowns of that period, annus horribilis in the Queen's own phrase, which did lasting damage to the monarchy's public standing and prompted a searching debate about the institution's relevance.
Anne remarried within months. In December 1992 she married Commander Timothy Laurence, now Sir Timothy Laurence, at Crathie Kirk in Aberdeenshire, the parish church the royals attend during their stays at Balmoral. The ceremony was deliberately modest: 30 guests, her parents, the Queen Mother, her children Zara and Peter, and her three brothers. She wore a high-necked midi dress with a white jacket rather than a traditional bridal gown, and the couple departed on a transatlantic cruise that took in the Caribbean and the Galapagos Islands.
That contrast between the two weddings is instructive. The Westminster Abbey spectacle of 1973 belonged to an era when the monarchy presented itself through ceremonial scale; the Crathie Kirk ceremony reflected a more restrained, pragmatic institution. Anne's willingness to remarry quietly, and to keep doing her public work in the decades that followed, has contributed to her reputation, documented in biographical profiles by Encyclopaedia Britannica, as one of the most consistently diligent members of the royal family.
The unease beneath the pageantry
There is a liberal reading of this anecdote, and it is worth stating plainly. The royal family's domestic arrangements have always been shaped by institutional expectation rather than personal preference. Separate bedrooms, single beds, honeymoons conducted on a naval vessel in the middle of a tour of duty: these are not the choices of private individuals but the requirements of an institution that treats its members as instruments of public symbolism.
The consequences of that arrangement played out across a generation. The marriages of the Queen's three eldest children all ended in divorce, and the 1990s forced the palace into a renegotiation of its relationship with the public, from the歧 reactions to Diana's death to the modernized, leaner monarchy that followed. Anne's second marriage, which has now lasted more than three decades, stands out partly because it was built on her own terms: a small ceremony, a private life largely shielded from the press, and a partnership conducted away from the apparatus of state.
As of 2026, the couple live at Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire, a manor house reported to have five main bedrooms and four secondary ones. The space, one might observe, is no longer quite so constrained as the cabins of Britannia.
Why the small details matter
Republican critics will note, fairly, that a honeymoon anecdote about lashed-together beds is a trivial matter beside the constitutional questions the monarchy raises. But trivia is precisely how institutions soften their image. The Royal Yacht Britannia is now a museum where visitors can eat smoked salmon prepared by the galley team, and where the bedroom of a divorced princess is presented as heritage. The domestic life of the royal family, its compromises and its furniture included, is part of the machinery by which the monarchy sustains public affection.
Anne, now 75, has never courted that machinery. Her decades of public service and her evident distaste for sentimentality have earned her a respect that transcends the usual partisan lines, and her honeymoon beds, lashed together in the Caribbean in 1973, remain a small, human footnote to a life lived largely on the institution's terms.
FAQ
Where did Princess Anne and Mark Phillips go on their honeymoon?
The couple honeymooned aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, touring the West Indies in 1973 after their wedding at Westminster Abbey.
Why are there no double beds on the Royal Yacht Britannia?
Every cabin on the 412-foot vessel was furnished with single beds, reflecting the naval conventions and the separate-bedroom custom of the royal household. Later honeymooners, including Charles and Diana, reportedly had double beds brought on board.
Who is Princess Anne married to now?
Anne has been married to Sir Timothy Laurence since December 1992. They wed at Crathie Kirk in Aberdeenshire with 30 guests, after her first marriage to Captain Mark Phillips ended in divorce earlier that year.