Lady Frederick Windsor spills ‘disgusting' detail about her royal wedding
'Disgusting'.
That's not a word you hear too often when it comes to the royal family unless it's some anonymous Windsor source huffing down a Bakelite phone about Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's latest home shopping network juicer side-hustle.
That or someone has left oat milk in the palace fridge again.
But not today with a royal bride having come out and given a shockingly (and wonderfully) candid interview, revealing she didn't pick out her own wedding dress, knew very few people at the reception and even admitting that there was one detail she found 'disgusting'.
Everyone say a polite hello to Sophie Winkleman who is also Lady Frederick Windsor and while she might not be a household name in Australia, she is very much between the royal bosom.
Back before it was restricted to working members of the royal maily, she used to be able to be spotted the Buckingham Palace balcony, and these days you are likely to spy her having a jolly old time of it with 'dear friend' King Charles in the royal box at Ascot or doing her bit to support Kate, The Princess of Wales' annual Christmas concert.
Extra points if you knew her daughter Maud Windsor used to be in the same London class as Prince George and was a bridesmaid at Princess Eugenie's wedding.
Specifically, Sophie is married to Lord Frederick Windsor, the son of Prince and Princess Micahel of Kent and the King's second cousin, and while Freddie is so far down the line of succession you have to squint at number 54 but still, the couple are very much in the titled thick of it.
(Lord Frederick was 17th in line when he was born.)
This week Sophie, who also happens to be a working actress, has given a new interview and admitted some wonderfully indiscrete details about her own royal wedding.
The year was 2009, long before the les Windosrs would 'welcome' another TV gal into their midst, and with Prince William yet to pop the question to long time squeeze Kate Middleton, what the UK needed was a royal wedding.
A guest list was assembled about the length of an abridged copy of Burke & Peerage, Hampton Court Palace was rightfully booked for the affair and various HRHs were assembled (Princess Eugenie, the Duke and Duchess of Kent).
However now Sophie has admitted that there was a part of the day she found 'disgusting'.
Speaking to the Telegraph this week she said: 'It was such a blur because we had to move to Los Angeles the day after and I had to start a brand new job the day after that…I'd been so concentrating on the work that I hadn't thought about the wedding.'
Enter unto the breach her future mother-in-law and longtime Buckingham Palace balcony stalwart Princess Michael of Kent who 'sort of took it all over,' said Sophie.
'I actually didn't mind at all. I thought, 'Great, do everything''.
The end result, based on photos, is of a frou-frou-y affair that even diehard Cinderella-stans might have considered OTT; 'fairytale' was never going to be used as an adjective.
In the cold light of 2025, Sophie does not sound exactly enamoured of all that bugle-beaded 'everything'.
'My hair was so disgusting and Freddy still gets upset about it. It was just disgusting. And my mother-in-law chose my dress, which was very sweet and puffy, but I looked barking,' she told the Telegraph.
'I look back on it and think I should have worn a simpler dress and I should have got my hair blow dried by someone who'd done it before'.
This is not the first time that deliciously unfiltered Sophie has pulled back the curtain on her Windsor nuptials and what goes into planning a royal hitchin'.
'I didn't know anyone at my wedding. I had my best pals there but basically it was full of faces I'd never seen before,' she told Tatler in December last year.
During that same interview she enthused about Princess Michael having 'brilliantly' 'taken full personal charge' of the 400-person event and said, 'I was so determined not to be a bridezilla, I didn't even work out my hairstyle and I cannot tell you how disgusting it looked.'
Coming up the aisle, the first thing I said when I saw Freddie was, 'I'm so sorry about the hair.''
He said, 'Yes, what on earth have you done?''
While the Sussexes have hardly been tight-lipped about what a rough trot Meghan had joining Crown Inc, Sophie has only ever raved about her extended in-laws.
She told Tatler last year: 'Behind the camera they're really fun, clever, kind people...I love Catherine and William, but they're so busy and don't live in London, so I don't see them much.'
Meanwhile, Charles 'is a very dear friend'.
'I spend a bit of time with him,' she told the Times in 2020.
'You see how he works all day long, has a quick supper and then disappears until about 4am to write letters.
'He cares about so many things and he comes up with brilliant solutions.
'I've been incredibly welcomed with open arms by all of them. I haven't had a single negative experience.
'They'd never tell me off at all if I wanted to play some [racy] role. Everyone's looked after me.'
And she means that quite literally.
The late Queen and Charles both offered practical support after Sophie broke her back in a 2017 car crash during she thought she was 'a goner'.
After the accident, Charles (then the Prince of Wales) tasked his Clarence House cook to provide Freddie and Sophie's family with twice-a-day meals, 'for weeks on end . . . It was life saving'.
Then, during her recuperation, Queen Elizabeth suggested a solution to help her manage the pain of rehab.
As Sophie told Tatler: 'She said, 'We can't have that. You have to go in the water.'
She told us that when horses had broken backs, they swam, and so she let me use her pool at Buckingham Palace.
'That's the reason I got better. It was so typically thoughtful.'
Blimey. The Palace pool. 'Disgusting' hair. Looking 'barking'.
It would be remiss of me here to not play a quick game of Sussex Subbing.
What if all of this had come out of Meghan's mouth instead? Imagine a lit match going off in a fireworks factory built on top of an oil refinery. Kablooey.
There is a lesson in all of this for any Cinderella-ish aspirants.
Don't overlook the very clear benefits to being wed to No. 54 rather than anyone in the single digits, of marrying far farther down the royal rung.
Just think, all the invitations to Ascot and Westminster Abbey, none of wing-clipping self sacrifices of senior royaldom and the occasional chance to do a lap in the palace pool.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years' experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
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