The coronation of Edward VII and his wife, Alexandra, as king and queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions took place at Westminster Abbey, London, on 9 August 1902.

Originally scheduled for 26 June of that year, the ceremony had been postponed at very short notice, because the King had been taken ill with an abdominal abscess that required immediate surgery.

The 1838 coronation of Queen Victoria, Edward VII's mother and predecessor, had been an unrehearsed and somewhat lacklustre event in the Abbey, though the newly extended street procession and celebrations around the country had been a great success.

Victoria's Golden and Diamond Jubilees had created the expectation that Edward's coronation equally would be an expression of the nation's status as a great imperial power.

In December 1901, an Executive Coronation Committee was formed, whose leading member, Viscount Esher, worked closely with the King to set the agenda for the event.

[6] Curzon was given a free hand to decide on the gown's design, with Alexandra stipulating only that the motifs should include the floral emblems of England, Scotland, and Ireland, being the English Tudor rose, the Scots' thistle, and the Irish shamrock.

[6] As Alexandra was to wear a heavy velvet and ermine mantle, it was decided that the gown itself should be made of lightweight gold net with metallic embroidery, the Zari of India of which Lady Curzon was an admirer.

[7] Work on stitching Queen Alexandra's gown began in October 1901 and finished in February 1902, with final alterations made by the House of Worth of Paris.

[8] On 23 June 1902, three days before the date set for the coronation, Edward and his wife, Alexandra, returned from Windsor Castle to Buckingham Palace in preparation.

[9] It was undersigned by, among others, Lord Lister and Sir Frederick Treves,[9] who actually carried out the operation on a table in the Music Room at Buckingham Palace, to drain his abdominal cyst.

[8] On 26 June itself, a "solemn service of intercession" was held at St Paul's Cathedral, which was attended by many of the British and foreign dignitaries who were in London for the coronation.

[10] Although workmen immediately received instructions to begin dismantling the wooden stands that had been erected along the route of the procession, Edward was insistent that regional celebrations and a planned "Coronation Dinner for the Poor of London" should go ahead.

The confectionery maker Rowntree's provided each diner with a tin of chocolate and a rather better one for the 60,000 people who had acted as stewards on the grounds that they would "be of greater influence socially than the poor".

This made the coronation "a domestic celebration of the British race united by the influence of the Imperial Crown" according to J. E. C. Bodley, the official historian of the event.

[15] Among the 8,000 guests at the Abbey were the prime ministers of the British Dominions, thirty-one rulers of the Indian princely states, the Sultan of Perak and the Litunga of Barotseland.

Because of his failing eyesight, the text of the service had to be printed in gigantic type onto rolls of paper called "prompt scrolls"; they are preserved in the Lambeth Palace Library.

New work commissioned for the occasion famously included Hubert Parry's setting of Psalm 122, I was glad which skillfully incorporated the traditional acclamation of "Vivat Rex" by the King's Scholars of Westminster School on the entrance of the sovereign.