Few events are as uplifting and unifying as a royal wedding, in no small part because few events are as ostentatious and filled with unique traditions as a royal wedding.
Whilst modern wedding photography is designed to focus on capturing the intense emotions of the moment, the first-ever wedding photograph was not only staged but would only be taken 14 years after the wedding ceremony itself.
Queen Victoria took the throne at 18 and by 20 had decided to get married, partly out of sheer adoration for her husband Prince Albert, but primarily to get out of the complex and strict rules her mother had set up essentially to maintain a grip on the throne.
On the 10th February 1840, the first major royal wedding in the UK took place, and whilst she was not the first royal to wear a white dress on her wedding day, her doing so was so groundbreaking that it effectively popularised the white wedding to this day.
Prince Albert opted instead for a British field marshal uniform of the time, which was bright red and white, which managed to get criticism from, of all people, Florence Nightingale, who said it looked like he borrowed it.
It was the first ceremony to have the kind of fervour that is now a trademark of royal weddings, with crowds braving the rain for hours to cheer the royal carriage.
Whilst photography that endured had existed since the very year Queen Victoria took the throne, depictions of the wedding at the time consisted of paintings and etchings until 1854 when a reenactment photograph was taken of the pair in their wedding outfits.
This would itself create the tradition of wedding photography that endures to this day.