Queen elizabeth ii wedding photos

Written By: Liz Ronk

Queen Elizabeth II has been on the throne for so long that it can be a bit disconcerting to encounter photographs of her as a bride, or a newlywed.

Queen elizabeth ii wedding photos

And Elizabeth has always appeared more distant and more removed from the sort of everyday pleasures and pains that define the lives of mere commoners.

But in November 1947, when she wed Prince Philip (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark), Elizabeth allowed the world to glimpse, briefly, another side a less severe and less purely ornamental side of her life.

In photographs made that day, Elizabeth looks like brides all over the world have looked, from time immemorial: a bit nervous, a bit self-conscious, a bit overwhelmed … and happy.

Here, LIFE.com offers a series of photographs—including some that did not originally run in LIFE—made by magazine staffers like Nat Farbman and Frank Scherschel.

In an article that ran in the Dec. 1, 1947, issue of LIFE, meanwhile, the magazine’s editors took pains