New Princess Diana wedding photos for sale

It's coming up on the 18th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, so naturally someone has unearthed something having to do with her and is hoping to sell it to the highest bidder among her many still-devoted fans.

This time the items for sale are long-unseen, never-before-published, behind-the-scenes wedding pictures of the former Lady Diana Spencer, still in her voluminous wedding gown, snapped at Buckingham Palace shortly after she married Prince Charles in 1981 and became the Princess of Wales.

You can see Queen Elizabeth II, her new mother-in-law, walking beside her down a painting-lined corridor of the palace. You can see Charles, resplendent in the highly decorated military uniform he wore for his first wedding, on July 29, 1981, at St Paul's Cathedral. You can see Diana's flock of bridesmaids and page boys.

And you can see Diana, holding in her arms and comforting the youngest little bridesmaid, 5-year-old Clementine Hambro. It's a spontaneous picture of the then-20-year-old princess which, in retrospect, seems to be emblematic of what would become her nurturing, maternal image, the image that made her so beloved by her own sons, Princes William and Harry, and by millions of her admirers around the world.

And now, you can buy this image yourself (minimum bid $300). Fourteen candid black-and-white and color photos of the Charles and Diana wedding reception will be sold as a group at a Boston-area auction house on Sept. 24.

The photos were taken by the late Patrick Lichfield, a professional photographer, a cousin of the queen and the fifth Earl of Lichfield. As a royal relative, he was the only photographer allowed to take informal photographs of the royals and guests when they returned to Buckingham Palace for the reception following the wedding watched round the world.

The photos are being sold by an unnamed female "photographic assistant" to Lichfield, according to Remarkable Rarities Auction.

"These are original prints. The black and white ones were printed by me, in the dark room in Aubrey Walk, within hours of the wedding," the assistant says in the letter of provenance on the auction website. "Lord Lichfield had me make up an album of black and white and color photographs, which he presented to Prince Charles and Princess Diana to commemorate the day of their wedding....To my knowledge, none have ever been published. Very few people have ever laid eyes on them."

The photos being sold did not go into the wedding album and instead were given to the assistant by Lichfield in recognition of her work on the wedding photographs, according to the letter of provenance.

Six of the photos depict Diana in her memorable wedding dress (so puffy it had to be stuffed into the royal carriage) with members of her Spencer family, as well as royals including Princess Anne (Charles' sister), Princess Margaret (the queen's sister), Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and Prince Andrew (Charles' brother and best man).

Others show the queen watching a small television broadcasting images of the massive crowd outside the palace. Some show the family gathering in the Throne Room for formal photographs, as Diana's dress designers, Elizabeth and David Emanuel, arrange her massive train.

The official pre-auction estimate for the sale of the collection is between $1,000 and $2,000, says auction house executive vice president Bobby Livingston, but he thinks it could go much higher. He says a single rare photo of a teenage Diana sold at RR Auction in October 2014 for slightly more than $18,000.  One of the items to be sold is the official embossed access pass for the assistant, reading, "Admit Miss...to Buckingham Palace Side Entrance on Tuesday, 28th July at 2:00 p.m. Remarks: To install lighting in the Throne Room for Wedding Group pictures."

Livingston said the seller of the wedding collection may have been inspired to sell by either that auction or the coming anniversary of Diana's death.

Diana was killed in a Paris car crash on Aug. 31, 1997. She was 36. Her descendants include two grandchildren, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, born to her son Prince William and his wife, Duchess Kate of Cambridge.