Marriage proposals can be hard to carry out as planned – but for Prince Harry he got an answer before he even finished asking.
He popped the question on a ‘typical’ night at Nottingham Cottage, his home in Kensington Palace, on November 4, 2017.
Meghan was ‘trying’ to cook a roast chicken for dinner – a recipe likely inspired by her love for the Barefoot Contessa host Ina Garten – when Harry popped open a bottle of champagne.
In Spare, Harry shared how he surprised Meghan – and her rescue beagle Guy – with a candle-lit scene on the grass outside the Nott Cott walled garden.
‘I wanted it to look like Botswana, where I’d first thought of proposing,’ he wrote.
Botswana holds a special place in the couple’s romance when early in their blossoming romance, Harry invited Meghan on a trip there in 2017.
Harry got on one knee and said: ‘Spend your life with me? Make me the happiest guy on the planet?’
Before he could present her with the two-and-a-half-carat ring, Meghan interrupted saying: ‘Can I say yes? Can I say yes?’
Prince Harry asked Meghan Markle to marry him on a ‘typical’ night at Nottingham Cottage, his home in Kensington Palace, on November 4, 2017
The engagement was bittersweet for Harry with him stating in an interview that the ring was a way of him keeping his mother around – but that he missed sharing ‘happy news’ with her
The engagement came soon after the couple attended the Invictus Games in Canada in September 2017
The ring was made using small gems from a bracelet which belonged to Harry’s late mother Princess Diana and an ethically sourced stone from Botswana.
In Netflix’s Harry & Meghan, the couple spoke about the proposal and when the engagement news was made public.
‘Of course, I got down on one knee, of course I did,’ Harry said in the documentary.
‘We were so joyful and excited,’ Meghan added.
In the royal biography Finding Freedom, co-authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand describe the period between the couple’s private engagement and when the news went public.
They wrote: ‘Media requests for comment on their engagement status were met with no response or a promise of ‘nothing to report’.
‘But the evidence was mounting. When Harry and Meghan took a sudden two-hour meeting with with Jason, Harry’s head of communications, and Ed Lane Fox, his private secretary, on November 22, it was clear that something was happening.’
A group of dedicated media outlets gathered outside Kensington Palace every day from 6am, ready for an announcement.
The couple are pictured at their engagement announcement on November 27, 2017
The ring was made using small gems from a bracelet which belonged to Princess Diana with an ethically sourced stone from Botswana
A group of dedicated media outlets gathered outside Kensington Palace every day from 6am, ready for an announcement
BBC staff and cameramen started to spread the word that they had been contacted by the Palace to capture the couple’s first interview as husband and wife.
The Finding Freedom authors wrote: ”Keeping it a secret was easy for Meghan,’ a long-time friend said.
”It was something she could keep to herself with Harry. And an opportunity to enjoy the moment before it became public news.’
‘If the rest of the world was eager to know the status of Harry and Meghan’s relationship, the couple was content to spend most of their time at home enjoying, as a friend described it, ‘cosy nights in front of the television, cooking dinner’.’
Perhaps they were watching Netflix’s the Crown, which came out in late 2016 and which Harry admitted keeping an eye on.
The engagement was bittersweet for Harry with him stating in an interview that the ring was a way of him keeping his mother around – but that he missed sharing ‘happy news’ with her.
According to Scobie and Durand, Harry felt Meghan and Diana would have been ‘thick as thieves, without question’.
The only people Meghan explicitly told about the engagement were her parents and best friends, later sharing a snap of her wedding ring with her girlfriends
The couple spent cosy nights in front of the television and cooking dinner. Harry is pictured with Meghan’s beagle, Guy
On the day of their engagement Meghan had been roasting a chicken. She is pictured with a Thanksgiving turkey in 2015
Guy the beagle was very important to Meghan and was there for the wedding proposal
Meghan is pictured gardening at Nottingham Cottage where she and Harry spent time together before publicly announcing the proposal
Prince Harry moved into Nottingham Cottage (pictured) from Clarence House following his brother’s departure, with the house referred to as his ‘bachelor pad’ after leaving the Army. Harry and Meghan lived together at the cottage following their engagement
Meghan had moved in to Nottingham Cottage on November 20 and, as the days passed, members of the media gathered permanently outside Kensington Palace, expecting an announcement.
Finally, after keeping the news private for weeks, Charles directed his office at Clarence House to announce the engagement on November 27, the Monday following Thanksgiving in the US.
The engagement came soon after the couple made a public appearance in September 2017 at the Invictus Games in Canada.
‘Sixteen months after the couple met and just over three months after their secret engagement Meghan was announced as the next royal bride’, Scobie and Durand wrote.
Once Harry proposed, he talked Meghan through the process they would have to follow.
Harry had got permission from the Queen already – which was required due to his place in the line of succession.
Aides suggested that a suitable time for the conversation to happen would be a family shooting trip to Sandringham in late October, and Harry got some time alone with the monarch at the end of the day.
He wrote in Spare: ‘I saw her waiting for me to speak, and not waiting patiently. Her face radiated: ‘Out with it.’
The news was finally announced to members of the public on November 27, 2017, following Thanksgiving weekend in the US. Kensington Palace is pictured
‘Of course, I got down on one knee, of course I did,’ Harry said in the couple’s Netflix documentary
‘Sixteen months after the couple met and just over three months after their secret engagement, Meghan was announced as the next royal bride’, Scobie and Durand wrote
Meghan and Harry attend an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace on November 27, 2017
‘I coughed. ‘Granny, you know I love Meg very much, and I’ve decided that I would like to ask her to marry me, and I’ve been told that, er, that I have to ask your permission before I can propose.’
”You have to?” Harry quoted his grandmother saying.
”Um. Well, yes, that’s what your staff told me, and my staff as well. That I have to ask your permission,” Harry wrote.
‘At long last I realised: She’s saying yes, you muppet! She’s granting permission. Who cares how she words it, just know when to take yes for an answer.’
But the Queen’s approval wasn’t formalised until the following year when she signed the Instrument of Consent on March 14. It was not publicly announced until early May.
The tradition dates back to 1772 after the Duke of Cumberland secretly married Lady Anne Horton – considered to be a disreputable widow of a commoner.
The first six in line to the throne must now get the monarch’s approval before they marry.
Meghan’s own mother, Doria, was told by Harry about his engagement plans while the couple were in Toronto for the Invictus Games.
‘Spend your life with me? Make me the happiest guy on the planet?’ Harry said when he proposed
Meghan was quick to attend royal engagements with Harry after their announcement
The engagement was apparently a success – despite the interruption – with Harry saying ‘It was really a nice moment and I think I managed to catch her by surprise as well.’
But despite this, the couple later revealed in their Netflix series that their engagement interview was an ‘orchestrated reality show’.
Meghan said: ‘It was, you know, rehearsed. So we did the thing out with the Press and then we went right inside, took the coat off, sat down and did the interview. So it was all in that same moment,’ she added.
Despite Scobie and Durand’s claiming that ‘high-achiever’ Meghan was ‘willing to jump to whatever platform being Harry’s wife afforded her’, perhaps Meghan jumped in too soon without understanding the reality of her new life.
