After 40 years, you can finally have your Charles and Diana wedding cake — but don’t eat it, too.
A 28-ounce slice of the cake from the day the Prince of Wales made the late, great Lady Diana a princess is going up for auction Aug. 11. The piece of cake is expected to fetch 500 British pounds, or about $700.
The slice comes from one of the 27 cakes offered at the July 29, 1981, nuptials. Over 750 million people tuned in to watch the televised wedding of the century, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury famously uttered the line: “Here is the stuff of which fairy tales are made of.”
The iced cake has a white marzipan base and is decorated with a sugary facsimile of the royal coat of arms colored in gold, red, blue and silver.
The piece was given to Moyra Smith, a member of Queen Elizabeth’s household at Clarence House. Smith stored the slice in a floral cake tin with a label on top reading, “Handle with care — Prince Charles & Princess Diane’s [sic] wedding cake,” with the date “29/7/81.”
Smith sold the cake to a collector in 2008, who is putting it up for auction. The lot also comes with a wedding program, ceremony details and a breakfast menu.
Chris Albury of the UK’s Dominic Winter Auctioneers told the Huffington Post that the slice “appears to be in exactly the same good condition as when originally sold,” adding, “But we advise against eating it.”
Diana was married to Charles, now 72, from 1981 to 1996. The Princess of Wales died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 at the age of 36.
The couple wed at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London with about 3,500 in attendance. Following the ceremony, the pair and 120 of their guests dined at Buckingham Palace for a wedding brunch. Friends and family nibbled on brill in lobster sauce, chicken stuffed with lamb mousse and strawberries with cream.
Alongside Charles and Diana’s 27 cakes, their royal-official wedding cake was baked by David Avery, head baker at the Royal Navy’s cooking school in Kent. The towering cake was baked over a period of 14 weeks. The fruit cake was decorated with the Prince of Wales’ coat of arms, the Spencer family crest and flowers including roses and orchids.
