Meghan Markle and Prince Harry admitted Monday that they did not secretly get married three days before they exchanged vows in front of a global audience during their May 2018 royal wedding.

A spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex told The Daily Beast that they exchanged “personal vows,” but acknowledged that this private event did not constitute a “legal” or “official” service.

During their March 7 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan and Harry implied that this personal exchange of vows, taking place in a garden at Kensington Palace, was their legal wedding by saying it was presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.

Meghan, 39, said to Winfrey: “Three days before our wedding, we got married. No one knows that. The vows that we have framed in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

These statements to Winfrey have given the couple’s critics ammunition to question the credibility of other things they said during their explosive interview with Winfrey.

Soon after the interview, Church of England officials cast doubt on the claims about a backyard wedding. Church officials cited church law to say that a wedding isn’t legal unless it is witnessed by two people, or takes place in a “certified place of worship.”

The archbishop’s office told a Newcastle vicar: “Justin does not do private weddings. Meghan is an American, she does not understand.” The vicar, Mark Edwards, told the regional news site ChronicleLive he contacted the archbishop’s office for clarification.

Edwards said he was told: “Justin had a private conversation with the couple in the garden about the wedding, but I can assure you, no wedding took place until the televised national event.”

Defenders of Meghan and Harry said that Meghan was merely making the point that their exchange of private vows in the garden was more personally meaningful for them because, as she told Winfrey, it was “between us” and not part of a “spectacle for the world.”

But critics of the couple have seized on such inaccuracies and discrepancies in their interview in an attempt to undermine some of the more damaging things they said about the royal family.

Meghan and Harry alleged that Kate Middleton made Meghan cry during a bridesmaid’s dress fitting before the wedding; said Prince William feels “trapped” in his royal role; and claimed Charles cruelly cut them off financially when they left the U.K.

Even more seriously, Meghan and Harry said the royal family was indifferent to Meghan’s suicidal despair and said that someone in the family had expressed concerns about Archie’s skin color before he was born because Meghan is biracial.

The couple’s admission that they were not legally wed three days before their $50 million wedding comes after the British tabloid The Sun obtained their official marriage certificate. The document shows that the couple were in fact married on May 19, 2018 at Windsor Castle and that the witnesses were Prince Charles and Doria Ragland, Meghan’s mother.

Stephen Borton, former chief clerk at the Church of England office that grants marriage licenses, confirmed to The Sun: “I’m sorry, but Meghan is obviously confused and clearly misinformed. They did not marry three days earlier in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

“The Special License I helped draw up enabled them to marry at St George’s Chapel in Windsor and what happened there on 19 May 2018 and was seen by millions around the world was the official wedding as recognized by the Church of England and the law.”