Meghan and Kate’s feud was rumoured to have started BEFORE the wedding – but did Kate hand her the bouquet on the big day?

When Prince Harry first announced his engagement to Meghan Markle in 2017 it was hoped that the former Suits actress would form a blossoming bond with Kate, the then Duchess of Cambridge.

But over the course of the following six months, rumours were rife of a fiery feud between the two sister-in-law that saw the quick demise of the short-lived Fab Four. 

In his explosive 2023 memoir Spare, Harry claimed that in the build up to their big day there had been several disagreements between the two Royal women over issues that included borrowing lipgloss and bridesmaid dresses.

Their frayed bond was showcased in a seemingly uncomfortable girl’s day out to Wimbledon, while body language experts suggested that cracks had begun to form over Meghan’s unconventional veer into politics.

So, when Harry and Meghan tied the knot at St George’s Chapel in Windsor in May 2018, the nation held their breath to see if Kate would play an integral part in their fairytale ceremony. 

As Meghan, who donned a floor-length gown crafted by Givenchy and Clare Waight Keller, walked towards the historic chapel, eagle-eyed viewers noted that she was missing one crucial element: her bouquet. 

Using both of her hands to hold up her £100,000 dress, Meghan was followed by a cathedral-length, five-metre-long veil, trimmed with lace which depicted flora from each of the 53 Commonwealth countries.

Then, in almost miraculous speed, she was suddenly captured holding a bridal bouquet, including Forget-Me-Nots, Princess Diana’s favourite blooms, as she walked herself down the aisle.

While it appeared that the camera had deliberately sought to conceal the sudden flower exchange, unearthed online footage caught a glimpse of a mystery woman handing Meghan the flowers as she entered the chapel. 

Even more perplexing for many was that the woman in question appeared, based on the dress and headpiece, to have been Kate.

Had the two Royal figures managed to put their differences aside for the long-awaited nuptial? Was their frosty relationship now a thing of the past? 

In fact, the truth was quite the opposite, with tensions still simmering following a heated disagreement over Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid dress fitting. 

But some shoddy camera work and acute physical similarities had made it appear as though Kate was bearing the bouquet-hander role.

The woman in question was seen wearing a light coloured ensemble that bore an incredible resemblance to the off-white Alexander McQueen outfit donned by Kate on the royal wedding day.

Both the shape and size of her headpiece also appeared incredibly alike, while the mystery woman seemed to have dark brown hair colour, another key resemblance to the Duchess.

However, footage of Meghan’s procession showed that Kate was already sat at her front-row seat, alongside the now Queen Camilla, before Meghan had even reached the altar. 

This meant that it would have been near impossible for her to hand Meghan the bouquet. She would have needed to sprint down the side of the church to beat the bride before she reached Prince Harry at the altar.

So, the baffling question remained: Who was the obscure woman that passed over the bouquet to Meghan? 

Some suggested that the bouquet handler could have been royal aide Samantha Cohen, who worked for the Royal Household for almost 20 years.

As former private secretary to the late Queen, Ms Cohen later took on the role as a royal aide to Meghan, helping her to adjust to life in the Firm by ensuring she underwent a series of ‘duchess bootcamp’-style sessions.

In addition to attending the long-awaited wedding of Harry and Meghan, Ms Cohen also appeared at numerous events with the Duchess of Sussex, therefore making her a very likely choice to handle the bridal bouquet.

From a distance, Ms Cohen’s outfit for the big day held similarities with the mysterious bouquet holder as she adorned a pale pink lace midi-dress and a pair of block heels.

But the real truth remained uncertain and for many months royal fanatics, who continued to speculate about what had truly taken place in that incredibly swift handover.

Those hoping for a reconciliation between the two women clung onto the slight belief that Kate had taken on the role, while cynics maintained this would be a sadly unrealistic scenario.

Then, an entire year on from the event, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex took to Instagram to post a series of intimate images from their incredible day as they marked their one year wedding anniversary.

Littered amongst the sea of incredible shots was one key image that finally solved the floral mystery.

In one spectacular image, Prince Harry’s then assistant Clara Madden was captured beaming as she passed over the bouquet of freshly picked flowers to Meghan. 

Ms Madden, of New Zealand, was no stranger to the royal family, having previously worked as a trusted adviser for Kate and William. 

Indeed she was deemed so valuable that the Royal pair made a point of meeting her parents when they visited New Zealand in 2014, with her mother revealing afterwards: ‘William said to me that Clara is the star of the office.’

However, her career has not been without controversy – in 2016 she caused quite a stir in the Palace when she began dating Nick Loughran, media adviser to Kate and William, within months of him splitting from Rebecca Deacon, then the Duchess’ right-hand woman. 

In 2015, Ms Madden moved over to work for Prince Harry and, following the announcement that his whirlwind romance with Meghan had led to an engagement, she was tasked with the key role of projects manager, playing a vital role in ensuring that the day went smoothly. 

She accompanied the Sussexes on their royal tour of New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific in October of that year. 

Then, after the pair stepped back from royal duties in early 2020, Ms Madden was awarded a key position at Prince Harry’s Invictus Games Foundation.

While the slideshow video revealed touching moments shared between members of Harry and Meghan’s family, alongside others who played key roles on the day, there was one clear absence.

Crucially, Kate was the only member of the Cambridge family who attended the wedding but was not seen in Harry and Meghan’s post. 

She was at the event but not part of the bridal party and sat with other royal guests for the service.

Kate’s absence from the reflective post fuelled ongoing controversy that tensions remained high between both her and Meghan following an infamous bridesmaid dress fitting ahead of the wedding that had ended in tears.

Early reports in 2018 had suggested that Meghan had made Kate cry during the heated row, which Meghan later denied.

In his book Revenge, Tom Bower claimed unnamed sources told him Kate and Meghan disagreed over the length of Charlotte’s hemline and the fit of her dress.

He also claimed that Meghan’s ‘insistence’ was ‘supported’ by bridesmaid Jessica Mulroney, adding: ‘Some would say that Meghan compared Ivy [Mulroney’s daughter] favourably against Charlotte’. 

Meanwhile, Tom Quinn, writing in his book Yes, Ma’am: The Secret Life Of Royal Servants, claimed that both women were left ‘really upset’ by the incident.

A former member of staff told the author: ‘The truth is that during the discussions about the bridesmaid’s dress Meghan said a few things she regretted and Kate said a few things she later regretted but it was all in the heat of the moment.

‘Both women were crying their eyes out!’

The unnamed employee went on to explain that the incident was ‘subtly altered’ and ‘made more significant than it really is’ by the media.

This resulted in the disagreement becoming a ‘marker for all the other problems that Meghan had with Kate, William and other members of the family’.

However, Meghan gave a different version of events in her bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey, claiming that it was the other way around and adding: ‘She (Kate) was upset about something, but she owned it, and she apologised. And she brought me flowers’.

She continued: ‘It wasn’t a confrontation, and I actually think it’s… I don’t think it’s fair to her to get into the details of that, because she apologised.

‘What was hard to get over was being blamed for something that not only I didn’t do but that happened to me. 

‘And the people who were part of our wedding were going to our comms team and saying, “I know this didn’t happen. I don’t have to tell them what actually happened”.’

The discussion served as yet another example of Queen Elizabeth’s famous phrase, ‘recollections may vary,’ which she famously used in response to the concerns raised by Harry and Meghan regarding racial issues.

At the time, royal expert Katie Nicholl claimed that Kate found it ‘mortifying’ that their disagreement had reached the press, as she never wanted it to become public knowledge.

Though the bridesmaids dress incident continues to be disputed, it remains one of the most talked-about moments leading up to the Sussexes’ wedding – and a lingering factor in the family’s rift. 

While Meghan’s interview sought to put the rumours to rest, Harry reignited the discussion in his memoir, Spare, providing new details about the dispute.

According to Harry, Kate had sent Meghan a message in the days leading up to the wedding, expressing concerns about the bridesmaid dresses – specifically Charlotte’s.

Meghan suggested that Kate take Charlotte to a tailor at the palace for adjustments.

Later, when the two women spoke in person, Kate reportedly insisted that Charlotte’s dress was too big and had made her cry when she tried it on. 

Meghan, already overwhelmed by wedding preparations, was distressed by the conversation.

Harry wrote that when he returned home, he found his fiancee sobbing on the kitchen floor, overcome with stress.

However, he also noted that Kate later came to their house with a card and flowers as an apology.

Meanwhile, in another shock revelation laid bare within Prince Harry’s explosive memoir Spare, a chat over tea and biscuits at Kensington Palace in June 2018 was said to have descended into another conflict after the Duchess of Sussex told Kate that she must have ‘baby brain because of her hormones’.

William then called Meghan ‘rude’ to her face and ‘pointed a finger at her’ and explained: ‘These things are not done here’.

In an excerpt, Meghan then told William: ‘If you don’t mind, keep your finger out of my face’.

Defending his wife, Harry writes in his new book: ‘Meg said that she had never intentionally done anything to offend Kate and that if she had, she begged her to let her know so she could avoid a reoccurrence’.

In Spare, Harry states that Meghan had decided to raise the question of their relationship and tensions going back to when she started dating Harry, suggesting there had been crossed wires when Kate thought Meghan wanted to use her connections in the fashion industry, when in fact she already had her own.

Meghan suggested that these problems had been magnified by the wedding preparations and the discussions over bridesmaid dresses.

Harry then claims that Kate became upset and demanded an apology from Meghan for offending her when she mentioned her hormones after giving birth and suggested it had affected her memory.

Meghan initially said she couldn’t remember but then added: ‘I remember: you had forgotten something and I said that it didn’t matter, that it was because of pregnancy. Because you just had a child. Because of the hormones.’

Harry said Kate replied: ‘We are not close enough for you to talk about my hormones’.

The detail about the fight between the two women gives the fullest account yet of how the bitter rift between Harry and William extended to their wives. 

Within the explosive memoir, Harry also reveals that Meghan had asked to borrow lipgloss from Kate ahead of their appearance at the first Royal Foundation forum summit in February 2018.

He wrote that Kate was surprised, but rummaged around in her bag before offering it to Meghan.

He then claimed that Meghan applied a little gloss to her finger and rubbed it across her lips before Kate made a ‘disgusted’ face. 

The event served as the informal royal ‘working debut’ of Harry’s then-fiancée, American actress Meghan, and the all-smiling team sat down for what would be a 22-minute joint interview.

But beneath the surface, the cracks in the relationship between the brothers and wives were beginning to appear.

At the time, Harry said ‘working as family does have its challenges’, but insisted ‘we’re stuck together for the rest of our lives’.

But according to reports, it was an ‘awkward’ affair as Meghan took up the majority of the airtime, which apparently did not sit well with Kate.

Meghan had also unknowingly veered into the most fundamental rule of being a royal – to stay out of politics. 

She promoted the viral #TimesUp campaign, which aimed to create laws to punish companies which tolerated sexual harassment in wake of the Harvey Weinstein Hollywood scandal. 

Although it was a noble cause, the creation of laws would obviously mean input from politicians, which is a big royal taboo and caused traditional royalists to raise an eyebrow.

Analysing the intricacies of the Fab Four’s on-stage debut, body language expert Judi James told the Daily Mail: ‘There was a soft-focus filter over this “Fab Four” meeting of minds at the time, as Harry rather coldly and incorrectly put it: “We’re together for life”.

‘The expectation was that we had a new friend and “sister” for Kate in much the same way that Fergie and Diana paired off, plus a very glamorous royal quartet to team up for their campaigns and charities.

‘There was a powerful difference between the more cautious, careful and rather slow-hand-on-the-tiller campaign approach of William and Kate and the warp-speed urgency, drive, passion and energy of Meghan.’