Meghan Markle marked her 45th birthday on Tuesday, August 4, with a joyful celebration at her Montecito home, complete with a holographic paper tiara and a dance in her pajamas.
In a video shared on her Instagram Stories, the Duchess of Sussex is seen boogying to music while wearing the tiara, which bore the words “Happy Birthday.” The footage, taken by Prince Harry, captures her dancing in an oversized T-shirt reading “It’s giving Mrs” and loose white pajama bottoms, with no shoes, in the couple's kitchen.
Birthday festivities and family moments
Harry can be heard chuckling and saying, “Oh dear” as he watches his wife dance. The kitchen counter features a display of birthday balloons and several bouquets of flowers, and Harry pans the camera to show the breakfast he is cooking for the occasion.
Meghan, whose Netflix lifestyle series With Love, Meghan was recently nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award, also shared two new black-and-white photographs on social media. The playful images show her jumping into the swimming pool while holding a large bunch of balloons, with the caption: “Thank you for the birthday love!”
Recent UK trip and family reunion
The birthday comes shortly after Meghan returned home to California following a rare trip to the UK with their children, Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lillibet, five. During the visit, the Sussex family reunited with King Charles III on Sunday, July 10, marking the first time the monarch saw Meghan and his grandchildren in four years.
The UK trip also included a visit to Althorp House in Northamptonshire, the childhood home and final resting place of the late Diana, Princess of Wales. It was the first time Archie and Lilibet visited their grandmother's burial site, located on an island in the estate's grounds.
Summer holiday photos
Meghan shared additional snaps from their summer holiday on Instagram, including pictures from the UK, Europe, and back home in the US. One photo shows the family on a beachfront, with Harry splashing in the sea with the children while Meghan watches from the sand. Another black-and-white image captures Harry throwing Lillibet high in the air in the swimming pool.
Another photo shows Archie sitting in the cockpit of a plane, wearing a service hat and surrounded by pilots. The image hints that Archie may be interested in following in his family's footsteps in aviation. King Charles trained as an RAF jet pilot and Royal Navy helicopter pilot in the 1970s, while Prince William served as a full-time pilot with the East Anglian Air Ambulance from 2015 to 2017.
Harry's path to flying was less straightforward; he initially failed his pilot's theory test in 2009, then completed helicopter gunship training in California in 2011. He later went to Wattisham Airfield in Suffolk to train on Apache helicopters, and in 2013, the Ministry of Defence announced he qualified as an Apache aircraft commander.
