Princess Anne, 16, exudes elegance with 60s curled bob in unearthed wedding photo

Princess Anne didn't always have her "suit of armour" hair styled into her fuss-free updo.

Aged 16, the Princess Royal was pictured switching up her hair as she attended the then Lord Hamilton's wedding with Alexandra Phillips on 20 October 1966. Arriving at Westminster Abbey alongside a young Prince Charles, then 18, Anne looked elegant in a turquoise skirt suit consisting of a buttoned jacket and a column skirt.

She added a pearl necklace, black gloves and a cream turban-style hat which partially obscured her hairstyle. Anne's dark blonde locks were styled in a classic 60s bouncy blowdry with the ends of her chin-length bob flicked forward.

Her elder brother looked equally as smart in his three-piece grey suit with a mop of dark hair swept into a side parting.

The wedding was a family affair, with guests including Anne's parents the late Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, grandmother The Queen Mother and younger brother Prince Andrew, who served as a page boy.

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Anne's lusciously thick hair was once described as a "beast" by actress Erin Doherty, who played teenage Anne in the Netflix series, The Crown.

"Makeup literally took 10 minutes, but hair, sometimes it would take two hours," she said. "It's its own beast. Literally, I would sit in the chair, people would come in and go and come in and go, and I sat still in the same place. But it was so necessary for her character because it felt like her hair and her fashion were the way that she was able to express herself in the confined, controlled environment that she grew up in."

Anne later commented on Erin's enduring hair preparations for the show, stating that it took her very little time to complete the beauty look in real life.

"Actually I read an article the other day about the, I don’t watch Netflix and The Crown, but the actress was talking about how long it took them to do their hair like I did," she revealed in the documentary Anne: The Princess Royal at 70. "And I'm thinking, 'How could you possibly take that long?' I mean, it takes me 10 or 15 minutes."

After her wedding appearance in 1966, Anne grew her hair and rare photos show it flowing past her shoulders.

By the mid-1970s, Princess Anne was already flirting with the chignon style. She wore her hair in an intricate updo to marry her first husband Lieutenant Mark Phillips in 1973, before letting it down for her honeymoon in the West Indies.

However, after they divorced in 1992 and she married her second husband Sir Timothy Laurence, the Princess Royal wore her hair in a beehive half-up, half-down style – which she has rarely done since.

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