Unbelievably, yesterday marked five years since the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (and the anniversary was largely overlooked because of the couple’s involvement in a car chase in New York City earlier this week). One unforgettable moment from the royal wedding on May 19, 2018—and there were many—was Meghan’s sheer makeup look, which Hello reports “started a huge wedding beauty trend, with brides leaning towards a fresh-faced look, rather than a fully made-up complexion.”
And on that day, rather than cover up her freckles with foundation, Meghan let them shine through—and, though once an insecurity of Meghan’s, it’s a part of her that Harry loves.
He said as much in an excerpt from his tell-all, Spare, released earlier this year, where he remembered the night after their first date, Meghan video called him after taking off all of her makeup: “She’d washed her face,” Harry wrote. “I said, ‘God, I love your freckles.’”
Meghan “took a quick breath,” Harry wrote. “[She told me] every time she was photographed, they airbrushed out her freckles.” Harry called that “insane” and called her freckles beautiful.
Despite being an actress at the time, Harry wrote that his new girlfriend was surprisingly low maintenance, including on a trip to Botswana early on in their romance. “She opened her small suitcase—she needed to get something,” he wrote. “Here it comes, I thought. The mirror, the hairdryer, the makeup kit, the fluffy duvet, the dozen pairs of shoes. I was shamefully stereotyping: American actress equals diva. To my shock, and delight, there was nothing in that suitcase but bare essentials. Shorts, ripped jeans, and snacks. And a yoga mat.”
And Meghan paying homage to her husband’s love of her freckles on her wedding day wasn’t the only time she did so. On her Vanity Fair cover in 2017—where she proudly proclaimed that she and Harry were in love—they were on full display, as well.
