The Queen put up with the awkward Andrew-Fergie divorce in 1996 and the unorthodox Charles-Camilla union in 2005.
The break with the tradition Her Majesty will have to deal with in 2011? Prince William and Kate Middleton have invited their exes to the royal wedding, according to the Sunday Times.
The prince's old flames, Jecca Craig and Olivia Hunt, reportedly received invitations, as did Ms. Middleton's ex, Rupert Finch.
They probably weren't at the top of the 1,900-member guest list, but they still made the cut while U.S. President Barack Obama and Prince William's ex-aunt, Sarah Ferguson, did not.
It's a sign of the times, Toronto wedding planner Cynthia Martyn says. While a few generations ago, it was taboo, Ms. Martyn says, many of her recent clients have invited ex-lovers to their nuptials. It's part of a larger trend of rejecting old traditions, she says, in the same way that men have become far more involved with the planning process than they were 20 or 30 years ago.
Ms. Martyn has never seen a wedding-day fight sparked by an ex, but she has witnessed the friction between couples debating whether an ex should be invited. One partner may say that "time has passed" and "we're just friends," but if the other isn't secure, it can put a damper on planning. Even if the bride and groom are onside, the presence of an ex can ignite conflict with wedding guests and steal attention from the couple.
When Brittany Verge, a 23-year-old heritage interpreter and freelance photographer in Queens County, N.S., sat down with her then-fiancé to draft a guest list for their 2009 wedding, the name of a mutual high-school friend came up. It was her fiancé's ex, the woman he had dated before her.
There had been some unpleasant rumours surrounding the start of Ms. Verge's relationship with her husband, but years had passed since high school and Ms. Verge thought any bitter feelings would have dissipated. She sent an e-mail asking if the ex would like to come to the wedding and got a positive response, so she mailed an invitation. Later, the woman said she and her boyfriend couldn't attend.
The next year, when the woman invited Ms. Verge and her husband to her wedding, they went - and it turned out to be a mistake. "I had this sinking feeling that they purposely didn't come to ours," she says. "We had one guy come up and he said, 'I didn't expect to see you two here.' "
While she wanted to enjoy herself, she couldn't shake the feeling that the other guests were staring at her and her husband. They stayed for the couple's first dance and then made a swift exit. "We didn't want to overstay our welcome," she says.
Still, not all exes are doomed to be pariahs.
Caroline VanHouten not only wrote her ex in near the top of her guest list, she had him follow her and her groom around all day - he was the wedding videographer.
Ms. VanHouten, a stay-at-home mom in Ludington, Mich., was married for 15 years and had an amicable split with her first husband. Because she had kids with her ex, they stayed close and she thought he should be there to witness the start of her second marriage in 2005.
While the 46-year-old's family and friends were understanding (her ex-husband often goes to family get-togethers), many acquaintances were baffled.
"It was like, 'What does your second husband think of that?' They said, 'I could never do that.' I'm like, 'Why?' I think it's selfish for people to keep petty things between them and get in the way of a wedding."
Her second husband had no qualms with the first one attending. Ms. VanHouten says she laid it out to him during the early stages of dating that her ex was a good friend and would always play a big role in her life.
But inviting an ex-husband with whom you share children to your wedding is very different from inviting an ex-boyfriend, experts say. In Ms. VanHouten's case, her ex had been involved in her life for almost two decades - it made sense for him to give his blessing at her new wedding, especially because it meant so much to their children.
For cases where the ex is a person you dated, Melissa Samborski, a 15-year veteran in the wedding planning industry, offers this blanket advice to engaged couples: "I would highly advise against it. I don't think it's the right direction to start a new marriage on."
To her, "an ex is always an ex.
"Guest lists are probably one of the biggest areas that cause arguments between couples. There's always politics of some sort."
Calgary oil and gas industry technician Terra Soroka, 28, doesn't think there are any hard and fast rules for inviting exes - they have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. When her high-school boyfriend invited her to his wedding, she RSVPed yes.
"I don't even see him as an ex any more. We're just friends. There's nothing awkward about that."
But she doesn't have the same warm feelings about another ex - one she dated for three years. "There's always that one messy, messy breakup. You were cheated on, lied to. When the relationship ended, that was basically it."
When she found out the ex in question was engaged she wasn't surprised she wasn't invited - not that she had a desire to attend.
"The last thing you want to do is get off on the wrong foot because you're determined and hell-bound to invite your ex to your wedding," she says.
As for the royal couple-to-be, let's just hope that when the Archbishop of Canterbury asks anyone who objects to the union to "speak now or forever hold your peace," the exes don't say a peep. The Queen has been through enough.
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