The Gist
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Before marrying into the royal family, Kate Middleton worked her share of normal jobs.
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In the summer before college, she became a deckhand, and later waited tables while a student at St. Andrews.
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After college, she worked part-time at fashion brand Jigsaw before joining her parents’ party-planning business in 2007.
While being a princess is now Kate Middleton’s full-time job, she once worked in more relatable roles.
Before marrying into the royal family in 2011, the Berkshire native gained employment at a fashion brand, her parents’ party-planning business, and a few other run-of-the-mill joints. While she wasn’t the first royal bride to hold a paying job before marrying a British heir—that title goes to Princess Diana, who worked as a nanny and nursery school assistant before marrying then-Prince Charles in 1981—Kate is a member of a relatively small club.
For centuries, would-be royal brides were selected exclusively from noble and aristocratic families around the globe. Today, that’s no longer the case. As royals step outside the bubble of high-society when looking for love, it’s more likely their spouses will have held regular employment before walking down the aisle.
Ahead, learn more about the surprisingly normal jobs Kate Middleton held prior to her marriage to Prince William.
She worked as a deckhand in the summer before university.
Kate Middleton racing a yacht during a royal tour of Australia and New Zealand in 2014.
Credit: Samir Hussein/WireImage
While Kate famously met her prince when they were both students at the University of St. Andrews, her summer before college was less of a fairytale. The outdoorsy Marlborough alum took a job as a deckhand, spending four months on the staff at Southampton’s Ocean Village Marina. Per journalist Katie Nicholl’s 2015 book Kate: The Future Queen, the future Princess of Wales worked up to 11 hours a day for $75 per day. One of her former coworkers, Cal Tomlinson, told Nicholl that the job “was back-breaking work,” but said Kate was up for the task. “She was competent and confident but very unassuming,” Tomlinson added.
She waited tables in college.
Kate Middleton at her graduation ceremony at St. Andrews on June 23, 2005.
Credit: Getty Images
Not everyone has had their Below Deck arc, but many people can relate to waiting tables while in college. Princess Kate held the quintessential student job, although she joked in the 2019 BBC special A Berry Royal Christmas that she “was terrible” at it. The topic came up as she and host Mary Berry were visiting a Liverpool dry bar. As Kate mixed a drink, she shared that it reminded her of her “university days when I did a bit of waitressing.”Kate: The Future Queen also referenced her working as a waitress—first at The Doll’s House Restaurant as a freshman and later “at the Henley Royal Regatta” in summer 2002. The latter position would come just months before she and William moved in with some of their friends and became roommates at St. Andrews.
Post-college, she worked for Jigsaw—and helped design a necklace.
A variation of the necklace Kate Middleton helped design with Claudia Bradby for Jigsaw.
Credit: Getty Images
After completing her degree in art history in 2005, Kate began to job-hunt. In 2006, she started her first post-grad job, becoming a part-time accessories buyer for London-based fashion brand Jigsaw. The role came about after William and Kate had stayed at brand founder Belle Robinson’s holiday house in Mustique with friends. “Through that, as a thank-you to us, Kate supported a couple of Jigsaw events we did,” Robinson told The Standard in 2008. “Then she rang me up one day and said: ‘Could I come and talk to you about work?'”
“She genuinely wanted a job but she needed an element of flexibility to continue the relationship with a very high-profile man and a life that she can’t dictate.”
Soon, Robinson and Kate were working together three days a week, but once the press got wind that the girlfriend of the future king was working there, things took a chaotic turn. “There were days when there were TV crews at the end of the drive,” Robinson recalled. “We’d say: ‘Listen, do you want to go out the back way?’ And she’d say: ‘To be honest, they’re going to hound us until they’ve got the picture. So why don’t I just go, get the picture done, and then they’ll leave us alone.’”
While working at Jigsaw, Kate helped design a necklace that remains a bestseller for the brand today, People reported in 2025—so, add ‘jewelry designer’ to her very diverse resume. Per Robinson, Kate left the job in November 2007.
Her last pre-royal job was at her parents’ business.
A computer displaying the Middleton family’s ‘Party Pieces’ website in January 2013.
Credit: Indigo/Getty Images
Kate joined the family business, Party Pieces, in 2007, two years after graduating from St. Andrews. It would be her last job before becoming a royal, and one that put her artistic know-how to the test. Her mother, Carole Middleton, founded the online party supplies business when her daughter was a child, turning it into a thriving company. Per The New York Times, Party Pieces was estimated to be worth around $45 million at the time of her royal wedding.
According to CBS News, who reported on her departure from the company in January 2011, Kate worked in marketing. She handled everything from photo shoots and trade fairs to assembling a catalog. Her siblings, Pippa and James Middleton, also worked at Party Pieces, which Carole sold in 2023.
The proud mom told Sheer Luxe, “Party Pieces has literally grown alongside my family, and I’m very proud of that. Pippa wrote our ‘Party Times’ blog, James did the cakes when he first left school and (Kate) developed our first birthday and baby category.”
Read the original article on InStyle
