Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s Wedding in Montreal, 1964
A hotel suite, a canary-yellow chiffon dress by the costume designer of Cleopatra, and a Unitarian minister who asked for no publicity. Eleven years later, the same couple married again in Botswana.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton met on the set of Cleopatra in Italy in 1962, both of them married to other people, and for two years their romance was one of the most photographed stories of the age. When they finally married, on a Sunday afternoon in March 1964, they did it in a hotel suite in Montreal with a handful of people present, a minister who had asked that nobody be told, and a bride in yellow. It is one of the least conventional weddings on record, and one of the most copied.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Date | Sunday, March 15, 1964 |
| Place (ceremony) | The Royal Suite, Ritz-Carlton hotel, Montreal |
| Reception | A small gathering in the suite, over by about 6 p.m.; the couple dined privately that evening |
| The dress (designer) | Irene Sharaff: a short canary-yellow chiffon dress |
| Officiant | The Rev. Leonard Mason, Unitarian Church of the Messiah, Montreal |
The couple
By 1964 Taylor was the most famous film actress in the world and had already won the Academy Award for Best Actress, for BUtterfield 8. Burton was a Welsh actor with a formidable reputation on the stage. Cleopatra, released in 1963, cast her as the queen and him as Mark Antony, and the offscreen story overtook the film.
Taylor’s divorce from the singer Eddie Fisher was granted on March 5, 1964. At the time Burton was playing Hamlet in Toronto, and the couple, who had been staying at the King Edward Hotel there, flew to Montreal on a chartered plane with a small party. Burton became Taylor’s fifth husband ten days after the Fisher divorce.
The ceremony
The couple checked into the Ritz-Carlton’s Royal Suite as “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” The officiant, the Rev. Leonard Mason of the Unitarian Church of the Messiah, which stood almost across the street from the hotel, agreed to marry them on one condition: that there be no publicity. The marriage record, later shared by Quebec’s Institut généalogique Drouin, shows the ceremony took place in the hotel on March 15, 1964. When a witness was needed, the hotel’s room-service manager was asked, and accepted.
It was a Sunday afternoon, the guest list could have fit around a dining table, and everything was over by early evening. The couple had asked the hotel for two crates of champagne and two dozen glasses.
The dress
Taylor did not wear white. Her dress, by the costume designer Irene Sharaff, was a short dress in canary-yellow chiffon, and she wore white hyacinths in her hair. Sharaff was a meaningful choice: she had dressed Taylor for Cleopatra and won an Academy Award for the film’s costumes, and she would win another in 1967 for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the Burton–Taylor film for which Taylor won her second Oscar.
The jewels were part of the story too. Burton had given her an emerald-and-diamond brooch by Bulgari to mark their engagement in 1962, and as a wedding present in 1964 he gave her a Bulgari necklace of step-cut Colombian emeralds framed in diamonds. She later had the brooch mounted as a pendant for it. For more wedding looks that set aside the white gown, see our guide to celebrity wedding dresses.
The reception
There was no reception in the usual sense. After the ceremony the party stayed on in the suite, the gathering broke up at around six o’clock, and the newlyweds had dinner alone. Burton went back to Hamlet.
Twice married
The couple made eleven films together, among them The V.I.P.s, The Sandpiper, The Taming of the Shrew and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? They divorced in June 1974.
Sixteen months later, on October 10, 1975, they married again, this time at Kasane in Botswana’s Chobe region, where they were traveling. The ceremony was conducted by the district commissioner, Ambrose Masalila, with the manager of the Chobe Game Lodge and a tour guide as witnesses, and the news did not surface for five days. Taylor wore a dress by the British designer Gina Fratini. The second marriage lasted less than a year; they divorced in July 1976.
Why it mattered
Montreal was the celebrity wedding stripped to its essentials: a license, an officiant, a few witnesses and a room. The yellow dress, a short, colored design by a costume designer instead of a bridal house, made a case that a second or third wedding could have its own style instead of borrowing from a first. And the secrecy set a pattern that famous couples from Beyoncé and Jay-Z to Ariana Grande and Dalton Gomez would follow: marry first, tell the world afterward.
Borrow the idea
Wear a color. Pale yellow, blush, champagne or a soft green all photograph beautifully, and a short dress in chiffon suits a daytime ceremony in a room rather than a church. Our guide to the dress explains fabrics and lengths.
Marry in a suite. Many hotels will host a ceremony for a dozen people in a large suite or private dining room. Ask about a minimum spend instead of a venue fee, and book dinner for the couple afterward.
Flowers in the hair, not in the hands. Taylor’s hyacinths are an easy idea to borrow. Ask your florist for sturdy blooms that last out of water; see our guide to choosing a florist.
Mark it with one good piece. If a large reception isn’t the plan, a single piece of jewelry, engraved or bought together, can do the work of a party. Ring inscriptions are another quiet way to record the date.
Written and edited by the Today’s Weddings editors. How we research and check what we publish is set out in our editorial standards. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
