Dia­mond ear­rings Lady Diana Spencer wore to her wed­ding to Prince Charles, July 21, 1981. Col­lec­tion of the late Frances Shand Kydd

The Today Show has gath­ered together a rather fas­ci­nat­ing slideshow of Queen Eliz­a­beth II and her fam­ily mem­bers wear­ing tiaras and jew­elry belong­ing to the royal col­lec­tion. The above pair of ear­rings were worn by Princess Diana on the day of her and will be worn to the cer­e­mony at West­min­ster Abbey this com­ing Fri­day by her sis­ter, Lady Sarah McCorquo­dale, The ear­rings belonged to Frances Shand Kydd, who was Princess Diana’s and Lady McCorquodale’s mother.

The images posted on the Today Show’s web­site are a likely pre­view of the types of jew­els that we may see worn to Prince William and Kate Mid­dle­ton nup­tials. A four am start time is too early for me on Fri­day, but not my DVR. I’m look­ing for­ward to observ­ing how many of these his­tor­i­cal pieces were incor­po­rated into the cel­e­bra­tion of this con­tem­po­rary cou­ple who are eschew­ing some long-lived cus­toms — the bride arriv­ing in a car rather than a car­riage, for exam­ple — and gen­er­ally putting their own mod­ern stamp on royal traditions.