Hampton Court to offer weddings fit for a king

It will be one of the most magnificent places in the country to get married, a royal palace where couples can exchange vows in the same halls where kings once walked with their queens.

Or so the theory goes. But if Hampton Court Palace gets a licence to conduct marriage ceremonies, couples might like to consider the history of the place before they make a booking.

Divorce. Arrest. Execution. More death. And plenty of ghosts.

The palace hopes to have a final decision on its licence application in two weeks and has its first couple booked in to get married there next month.

One can only hope they fare better in the marriage stakes than the monarch most associated with Hampton Court - Henry VIII.

Henry, whose solution to most marital problems was to call up either the divorce lawyer or the executioner, depending on circumstances, spent his honeymoon with Anne Boleyn there before deciding her failure to bear him a male heir rendered her surplus to requirements.

His third wife, Jane Seymour, bore him his only legitimate son, Prince Edward, at Hampton Court, only to die of post-natal complications 12 days later.

His fifth wife, Catherine Howard, arrested there for adultery, managed to escape her guards for a moment and run down the corridor looking for the king to plead for her life before being dragged back to her room.

She was duly executed and her ghost is said to frequent the Haunted Gallery.

The one wife who Henry married at Hampton Court - Catherine Parr - at least managed to survive him.

Any couple still keen to proceed with a wedding can have a civil ceremony and wedding breakfast in the 20th century Garden Room for £4,000 plus VAT, or in William III's Banqueting House for £5,000 plus VAT.