The royal couple and a supporting cast of thousands are in Windsor for their pre-wedding activities.
With Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s big fat Royal Wedding scheduled to take place today, rehearsals are going on in full swing as the couple, accompanied by several other royals, descends on Windsor for nuptials. Meanwhile, the military, police and security services marched early Thursday through the streets of Windsor practicing their roles for the ceremonies, including a rehearsal of the much-anticipated carriage procession carrying newlyweds Harry and Meghan along the Long Walk to Windsor Castle after their nuptials in St. George’s Chapel. Here is all you need to know about the wedding.
Reportedly, around 600 guests have been invited to be a part of their big day while the wildflower bouquets, organic lemon and elderflower cake and photographer have already been chosen for the occasion. The fairytale wedding will be televised live. Windsor Castle will be festooned with “locally sourced foliage”, including “pollinator-friendly plants” from the Royal Parks meadows. The wedding cake at the first of two receptions will be a tower of lemon elderberry covered in butter cream.
Markle will be driven from luxe Cliveden House manor to the medieval masterwork of St. George’s Chapel, within the walls of Windsor Castle, where she will be warmly welcomed by a polite backdrop of 1,200 invited do-gooders from favored charities - such as Scotty’s Little Soldiers and Surfers Against Sewage - not an anti-monarchy banner in sight.
There will be the Reveal of the Dress. The Kensington Palace PR squad will blast the details. Then mum - Los Angeles yoga instructor Doria Ragland - is likely to walk “Flower” down the aisle, now that we know Markle’s father, Thomas Markle, would not attend the wedding due to his health. Having all the royals gathered at Windsor Castle allowed Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland the opportunity to meet Prince William, Duchess Kate, and their toddlers Prince George, 4, and Princess Charlotte, 3, before Harry and Meghan’s rehearsal dinner.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will perform the wedding ceremony with the vows from the Book of Common Prayer while Bishop Michael Curry, the first African American to preside over the Episcopal Church, is to deliver a sermon. Right after, on the streets of Windsor town, as many as 100,000 Brits and foreign visitors will be wearing outrageous hats and waving Union Jacks and the Stars and Stripes in a Pimm’s Cup-fueled bacchanal of selfie-taking to celebrate the ultimate in special relationships: Harry’s royal marriage to a California girl.
Dickie Arbiter, former press secretary for Queen Elizabeth II, said he thinks Harry and Meghan together will be able to create a stable life, even in these surreal environs – something Harry never had.
“Harry has at long last found someone that he can settle down with, that he can start a family with, that he can create a family that he was lacking as a young person,” Arbiter said as Harry as a boy split his time between his mother’s residence at Kensington Palace in London and his father’s Highgrove House in Gloucestershire. “I look at it from Harry’s choice of a bride, he feels he has met someone who can make him happy,” the retired courtier concluded.
–With information from NDTV
