Prince Harry is a hopeless romantic.
In the Duke of Sussex's 2023 memoir Spare, he recounted the intense moment he first laid eyes on his future wife, Meghan Markle.
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Connecting via social media
Before the couple married and had two children, Harry recalled being at Nottingham Cottage when he first saw the actress in a social media post shared by their mutual friend Violet von Westenholz.
"I was sitting around Nott Cott, scrolling through Instagram. They [Meghan and von Westenholz] were playing with a new app that put silly filters on your photos," he wrote in the tell-all about the clip.
"Violet and the woman had dog ears, dog noses, long red dog tongues hanging out. This woman with Violet…my god. I watched the video several times, then forced myself to put the phone down," Harry continued. "Then I picked it up, watched the video again. For thirty-two years, I'd watched a conveyor belt of faces pass by and only a handful ever made me look twice. This woman stopped the conveyor belt. This woman smashed the conveyor belt to pieces."
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Harry details Meghan's 'energy'
The father of two went into great detail about the overwhelming feelings he experienced. "I'd never seen anyone so beautiful. There was an energy about her, a wild joy and playfulness," he gushed.
"There was something in the way she smiled, the way she gazed into the camera. Confident. Free. She believed life was one grand adventure, I could see that," Harry continued. "What a privilege it would be, I thought, to join her on that journey. I got all that from her face. Her luminous, angelic face."
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Harry and Meghan's first date
Harry and Meghan had their first date at the Soho House in Los Angeles, Calif., in 2016. However, the two didn't go public with their romance until later that year.
"Red-cheeked, puffing, sweaty, half an hour late, I ran into the restaurant, into the quiet room and found her sitting at a small area on a low velvet sofa in front of a low coffee table," the 41-year-old wrote in the book about their initial romantic outing.
"She was wearing a black sweater, jeans, heels. I knew nothing about clothes, but I knew she was chic. Then again, she could make anything look chic," he said. "I'd seen so many photos of her from fashion shoots and TV sets, all glam and glossy, but here she was, in the flesh, no frills, no filter and even more beautiful. Heart-attack beautiful. I was trying to process this, struggling to understand what was happening to my circulatory and nervous systems and as a result, my brain couldn't handle any more data."
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Happily ever after?
Harry and Meghan got engaged in November 2017 and wed in May 2018 at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.
The pair welcomed their son, Prince Archie, in May 2019 and their daughter, Princess Lilibet, in June 2021.
While they began their union as working members of the royal family, the duo left The Firm in 2020 to live in America.