Yes, You Can Bid on a Slice of Princess Diana’s 40-Year-Old Wedding Cake
It’s not the first royal slice to go up for auction.
Anwar Hussein/Getty
If you simply can’t get enough of the royal family, now is your chance to own a piece of blue-blooded history. The only catch? The royal artifact in question is a 40-year-old piece of wedding cake from the late Princess Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles that’s expected to go for several hundred dollars.
Yes, you read that right. Dominic Winter Auctioneers, an auction house based in the United Kingdom, recently announced plans to auction off a slice of wedding cake that was served at Charles and Diana’s July 1981 nuptials. And while we wouldn’t recommend buying this confection if you’re in the market for a tasty snack, it’s actually in fairly good condition considering it’s a few months younger than Kim Kardashian.
According to the listing, the hefty slice of cake icing and marzipan base comes from one of the 23 official cakes that were crafted in honor of the iconic wedding. The piece is predictably ornate, and features “white icing with a sugared onlay of the Royal Coat-of-Arms coloured in gold, red, blue, and silver.” There’s also an adjacent silver horseshoe and leaf spray, as well as some white decorative icing above and below the Royal Coat-of-Arms.
The auction house also notes that there is “slight damage” to the shield and some other portions of the piece of cake, which weighs just shy of two pounds.
The cake, which may have been prepared for the Queen Mother's staff, ended up in the possession of Moyra Smith, a former employee of Queen Elizabeth’s mother. Per NPR, Smith’s family sold this portion of the royal cake to Dominic Winter Auctioneers in 2008, and the auction house has kept it in a plastic-wrapped cake tin for the past thirteen years.
Smith and others have seemingly been pretty careful with this prized treat. It’s been “preserved in cling film” — a.k.a. saran wrap — and is “supported on a card and tin foil base in an old cake tin with hand-made manuscript paper label signed by M[oyra] Smith taped to the lid.”
Still, the auction house noted: “It appears to be in exactly the same good condition as when originally sold, but we advise against eating it.”
The auction is slated to take place on August 11, and experts predict this piece of history, which is thought to be from the side of a cake or the top of a single-tier cake, may sell for as much as $500. The highest bidder will also receive a printed program for the St. Paul's Cathedral ceremony and a program for the Buckingham Palace royal wedding breakfast, which are part of the lot with the cake.
Not surprisingly, this isn’t the first piece of royal wedding history to hit the auction block. Back in 2017, a single slice of Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding cake was auctioned off for more than $1,000.
The following year, Julien's Auctions in California sold several prominent royal desserts, including a slice of wedding cake from Princess Anne’s 1973 wedding to Captain Mark Phillips, a separate slice of Charles and Diana’s 1981 cake, and another slice from William and Kate’s big day.
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