Kate Middleton Shares Her Kids’ (Brutally Honest) Reaction to Her Engagement Photos

(Image credit: Getty)

published 1 October 2022

Nothing quite like the honesty of children—the Wales family, comprised of the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, have apparently been paging through family photo albums as of late, and stumbled across a photo of William and Kate from their engagement in 2010.

While visiting Wales this week—their first visit to the nation after she and William became Prince and Princess of Wales on September 9—Kate told a well-wisher in attendance that, when her three kids saw the images, “the children look back at the photos and say, ‘Mummy, you look so young!’”

After knowing one another for nearly a decade—having met as coeds at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland back in 2001—William proposed to longtime girlfriend Kate in October 2010 in Kenya. Their engagement was announced on November 16 of that year, and their wedding followed five months later on April 29, 2011.

While on the visit to Wales, Kate spotted a person holding a flag featuring she and William’s engagement photo from 12 years ago, per People.

“Oh my goodness, is that from our engagement?” Kate said in a video shared by TikTok user mariahedges8. “We always laugh about this. Although we’ve been married for 11 years, we’ve been together for double that, so it’s extraordinary.”

William and Kate have a deep history with Wales, and poignantly chose to visit there basically as soon as they could—the day after the royal mourning period concluded on September 26. The couple lived there as newlyweds and first-time parents while William worked as a helicopter pilot with the Royal Air Force’s Search and Rescue Force.

“It’s nice coming back to Wales because it was where we lived before we had our family and everything, so it’s been a really special day,” Kate said.

For his part, William is learning the native language, said Reverend Steven Bunting, who hosted the couple at St. Thomas’s Church in Swansea, home to a food bank and baby supply hub for families in need, per People.

“He talked about learning Welsh and shared some Welch phrases he’s trying to do,” Bunting said. “He is throwing himself into the new role. The fact that they’ve come straight here on day one says it all.”

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Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.