Like other royal watchers, our eyes will be glued to the TV screens this Friday to pore over every detail of Prince Wills and Kate Middleton’s nuptials at Westminster Abbey. Though theirs will be telecast to a global audience estimated in the billions, other celeb weddings in the past have caught our fancy, too, even in instances where the pomp and pageantry we await this weekend, might not have been present. Here’s SO’s most memorable overseas unions.

1. While her marriage to backup dancer Kevin Federline lasted longer than her first (read: a Las Vegas shotgun nuptial to childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander which was annulled after 55 hours), Britney’s next walk up the aisle on September 18, 2004 was decidedly more of a family affair. It involved 27 friends and family members who were kept in the dark about the actual ceremony. Spears wore a Monique Lhullier wedding dress and the groom, a traditional black tuxedo. Britney bore her hubby two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James. The union, however, was short-lived and their divorce was finalised in July 2007. “I think I married for the wrong reasons. Instead of following my heart and doing something that made me really happy, I just did it for the idea of everything,” she told People magazine the following year.

2. As her son William readies to greet his wife-to-be when she glides up the aisle, his mum, the late Princess Diana of Wales was once labelled “the most photographed woman in the world”. Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles on July 29, 1981 was dubbed the wedding of the century, and watched by an estimated global audience of 750 million. Her dress — designed by David and Elizabeth Emanuel — was a magnificent ivory silk gown with an almost eight metres long veil. The narrow bodice was set with valuable lace and the sleeves opulently gathered up and embellished with little ribbons. The groom Charles, the Prince of Wales, cut a dashing figure in his gala-uniform of the Marines and ladies the world over swooned as they entertained the fantasy of being a princess bride. Reality, however, was a rude awakening as we soon discovered that life was no fairytale for the royal couple and was in fact plagued with marital dramas aplenty. Diana died in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997.

3. Legendary American film icon and blonde beauty, Grace Kelly moved from Tinseltown to a palace in Europe when she married Rainier III, the Prince of Monaco on April 18, 1956. The two crossed paths when the actress attended the Cannes Film Festival a year earlier as part of a delegation visiting from the United States. Following a photo session she was asked to participate in, the lady met her would-be-prince and a courtship (by way of private correspondence began soon thereafter). The couple had two official unions — one civil, the other religious. The former took place in the Palace Throne Room of Monaco on April 18, 1956 while the latter took place a day later at the Saint Nicholas Cathedral in front of 600 guests, including, of course, a lot of Hollywood stars. The bride’s ornate wedding dress was reportedly worked on for six weeks by three dozen seamstresses.

4. The late former First Lady Jacqueline Lee Bouvier and US President-in-the-making John F Kennedy were married on the morning of September 12, 1953, in the picturesque St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Newport, Rhode Island. The more than 800 guests included many notable individuals. And the stunning bride wore a dress of ivory tissue silk with a portrait neckline, fitted bodice, and a bouffant skirt embellished with bands of more than 50 yards of flounces.

5. The twice-married Mariah Carey took her first walk as a bride when she wed record executive Tommy Mottola in 1993 in a lavish ceremony that cost half-a-million dollars. Mottola famously discovered Mariah at a party and immediately signed her to a recording contract. Carey wore an exquisite Vera Wang design fashioned of ivory duchesse satin with a sweetheart neckline. Intricate beadwork embellished the bodice which flowed into a billowing ballgown skirt, to which a 27-foot train was attached. Though the union only lasted three years, the multiple Grammy-award-winning singer would wear the wedding gown again in her 2005 video We Belong Together.

Her next wedding was to actor/rapper/TVhost Nick Cannon, 10 years her junior, at her residence in Bahamas in 2008.