Victoria and David Beckham will celebrate their 25 year wedding anniversary on July 4 but the Spice Girl nearly ended up with her childhood sweetheart.
The fashion designer was first engaged to Mark Wood, living with her fiancé at her mum and dad's home in Goff's Oak, Hertfordshire. She even used Mark's surname in the early days of the Spice Girls, after first meeting him as a 14-year-old schoolgirl at St Marys High in Cheshunt.
Her electrician beau proposed in 1994, soon after she had auditioned for the girl group that would change her life. She began calling herself Victoria Adams Wood but as the band took off, she made the decision to end their six-year relationship.
"It wasn't the right person for me, I wasn't enjoying myself, so that had to end," she told Channel 4. "But I didn't give him the ring back either! I've still got it because it was a wicked ring. Isn't that horrible? It makes me sound really materialistic." For Mark, at first he had nothing but nice things to say about his ex.
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He told The People in 1997: "It was a very special relationship. But that part of my life is over. It's sad because we were together for a long time. But she's got what she always wanted and I'm proud of her." Then all hell broke loose a decade later when Mark dished on their sex life in a 2004 Channel 5 documentary called Victoria Beckham's Secrets.
He was reportedly furious after she told ITV documentary, Being Victoria: "For some reason we got engaged. He was an alarm engineer. If only he'd stayed in that cupboard that I met him in at my mum's house." At the time, a Channel 5 spokesman said, "As they always say, revenge is a dish best served cold. Mark has never spoken before in public about his relationship with Victoria but feels it is time to set the record straight. Mark was quite hurt by what she said and doesn't intend sparing Victoria's blushes."
Two years after their split, she met Beckham in the Manchester United player's lounge, and 10 months later they announced their own engagement on the steps of a hotel in Cheshire. Posh, then 23, giggled shyly as she showed off her £65,000 diamond solitaire handcrafted by Manchester jewellers, Boodle and Dunthorne.
"I am the happiest girl on the world today," she told the press. "I'm with the man I know I'm going to grow old and wrinkly with." On the day, she insisted David's proposal had been a 'surprise' but it later emerged that it was anything but. Despite having only been together for 10 months, according to author Gwen Russell, they'd decided to get engaged while VB was at the Spice World premiere in Los Angeles, and once she arrived home they set the wheels in motion.
"We'd already looked at a few rings but I didn't know which one he had chosen. I'd told him what my dream ring would be. He remembered and had it specially made for me," she reportedly said. For the proposal itself, they checked into the hotel straight after David's game with Manchester United, where Victoria was apparently presented with 30 roses before being escorted to their room which was festooned with £200 worth of red and yellow lillies.
And after getting into their bath robes and ordering dinner and champagne to the room, David popped the question. "We were sitting there in our dressing gowns when David pulled out the ring, got down on one knee and said, 'Will you marry me, Victoria?'" she said, according to the book Arise Sir David Beckham : Footballer, Celebrity, Legend. For David's part, his nerves didn't kick in until the final second.
"I wasn't at all nervous about getting engaged, we'd decided a while ago we would make it official this weekend," he apparently said. "I got the ring and was really looking forward to it. But when the moment came there were a few butterflies." But Posh had a trick up her sleeve. As a Spice Girl and one of the pioneers of Girl Power, she also wanted to ask the question and had gone and bought David a £50,000 diamond encrusted gold ring from exclusive jewellery store Van Cleef and Arpels on Rodeo Drive, Hollywood.
"I said yes, then produced my own ring and said, 'Don't forget Girl Power – will YOU marry me?' she reportedly said, adding that she'd chosen the ring with her mum and dad. David found her stunt "very funny", and after calling friends and family to share the happy news, they arranged the press conference for the very next day.
The Beckhams tied the knot in a lavish ceremony packed with star guests from the worlds of showbiz and football at Luttrellstown Castle in Ireland on July 4, 1999. The couple have been wed for 25 years this year but according to explosive new book, The House of Beckham by Tom Bower, their marriage hit crisis point eight years ago.
"Although the Beckhams could not hide their separate lives, they stuck together to support the Brand," claims the author, who says the couple were spending increasingly large times apart in 2016, with David based in Miami and Victoria in London.
"During London Fashion Week, she asked Beckham to return to London for a dinner in her Dover Street shop," Bower writes. "By the end of the celebration she must have wished he had stayed in America. Morosely, he sat staring at her guests. Some whispered that the two had been embroiled earlier in a foul-mouthed row. Later that evening Beckham was seen at Heathrow taking a late flight to New York."
Another flash point, Bower notes in his book, was when David told an Australian interviewer their marriage was 'hard work'. "Her husband's disloyalty baffled her," the book reads, "she fled to a Baden-Baden spa hotel for two days. The trip was to recover her 'emotional balance' but she was overwhelmed by rage and recrimination."
A version of this story was first published in 2023.
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