Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton Cried Eyes Out Over Bridesmaid Dress Dispute

Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton‘s clash over Princess Charlotte‘s bridesmaid dress is back in the news, with a biography claiming both women were left in tears over the dispute.

After the Duchess of Sussex’s 2018 wedding to Prince Harry, reports surfaced that the sisters-in-law had a disagreement over the tailoring of Princess Charlotte’s bridal party dress that caused Kate to cry. Meghan addressed the issue in her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, saying, “The reverse happened,” implying that she was the one in tears over the incident.

A new biography by Tom Quinn,Yes, Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, has reignited interest in the story, featuring a royal staffer’s account of the dispute between Meghan and Kate.

“I can tell you that all the papers and commentators got this wrong, the truth is that as with many of these spats between sisters, brothers or even sisters-in-law, both sides were really upset,” the staffer said, according to Newsweek.

“The truth is that during the discussions about the bridesmaid’s dress, Meghan said a few things she regretted and Kate said a few things she later regretted, but it was all in the heat of the moment,” the staff member continued. “Both women were crying their eyes out!”

The disagreement reportedly centered on the fit of Princess Charlotte’s white dress for the May 2018 wedding, where she served as a bridesmaid. Multiple insiders told PEOPLE there was significant “stress” leading up to the big day, and a source told veteran royal reporter Camilla Tominey of The Daily Telegraph, “Kate had only just given birth to Prince Louis and was feeling quite emotional.”

During her interview with Oprah, Meghan said, “It was a really hard week of the wedding.”

The Duchess of Sussex added that Kate was “upset about something,” but later “owned it.”

Kate “apologized, and she brought me flowers and a note apologizing,” Meghan said. “I actually think it’s — I don’t think it’s fair to her to get into the details of that because she apologized, and I’ve forgiven her.”

Meghan said what she found “shocking” was that the story made the press several months after the wedding. “I would have never wanted that to come out about her ever, even though it happened,” she said.

Prince Harry shared his perspective on the bridesmaid dress disagreement in his 2023 memoir, Spare, writing that Kate texted Meghan four days before the wedding, saying, “Charlotte’s dress is too big, too long, too baggy. She cried when she tried it on at home.”

According to the book, Meghan directed her to see the tailor “standing by” at [Kensington Palace] since 8 a.m. that morning, but Kate insisted “all the dresses need to be remade.”

After a “back and forth” between the sisters-in-law over text, the Duke of Sussex said in Spare, “A short time later, I arrived home and found Meg on the floor. Sobbing. I was horrified to see her so upset but didn’t think it was a catastrophe.” Harry added that Kate came by the next day with flowers and a card to apologize.

Ajay Mirpui, the luxury tailor who helped with the bridesmaids’ dresses, gave an interview to the Daily Mail in the wake of Harry’s book release in 2023, saying that he didn’t see an argument between Meghan and Kate.

“If anything happened in the background, it didn’t happen in front of me. But yes, weddings are stressful at the best of times — and especially one at this high level; you’ve got to respect that,” the tailor said. “They were faced with a problem like anyone gets at a wedding, with last-minute hitches. I can understand why anybody would be upset if the dresses weren’t fitting — it’s nerve-wracking.”

“I feel for them all because you wouldn’t want the children to go out on a big stage in an ill-fitting dress — and that’s what they were,” Mirpuri added. “All six bridesmaids’ dresses had to be fixed, and we did it.”

Mirpuri told the Daily Mail that his team of four “had to work tooth and nail for four days” to amend the dresses, not leaving Windsor Castle until 10 p.m. on the night ahead of the wedding.

Meghan has spoken about some of the other times where she and the future Princess of Wales didn’t see eye-to-eye, including their first meeting. In the Netflix series Harry & Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex said she was surprised by Kate and Prince William‘s formality behind closed doors.

“Like I was a hugger, always been a hugger,” Meghan said. “I didn’t realize that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.”

“I guess I’d start to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside, carried through on the inside,” she continued. “There is a forward-facing way of being, and then you close the door and you relax now. But that formality carries over on both sides, and that was surprising to me.”

Author Omid Scobie wrote in his 2023 book, Endgame, that Kate and Meghan had little in common from the start, but the rift between their husbands didn’t help in the early days of their relationship.

“Still, for Meghan, who found much of her time as a working royal a lonely and isolated experience, there was a hope that Kate would be someone she could at least turn to for an encouraging word during her lowest points,” Scobie said in Endgame. “They were once both outsiders, middle-class women brought into the house of Windsor for unimaginably different lives. Kate, however, was uninterested in forming this kind of bond with Meghan.”

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After Prince Harry and Meghan stepped back from their roles as working members of the royal family and relocated to California in 2020, they were last seen together with Prince William and Princess Kate at the 2022 funeral events of Queen Elizabeth. The couples made a surprise joint appearance in the days following the monarch’s death, stepping out together to view tributes left at Windsor Castle and greet well-wishers.

Prince William thought the outing “was an important show of unity at an incredibly difficult time for the family,” a royal source told PEOPLE at the time.