by Penny Junor
Inevitably there were people who expected to be invited but weren’t, and some for whom the invitation was a big surprise, like William’s search and rescue team at Valley, and Charlie and Tiggy, landlords from the Vine Tree at Norton. But two rather more notable figures were missing from the list that went out to the press the week before the wedding: two former Labour prime ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – while it was known that Baroness Thatcher and Sir John Major, both Conservatives, had been invited. For several days the press analysed the possible reasons for the ‘snub’, while St James’s Palace defended the decision; the wedding was not a State occasion, therefore there was no reason to invite former prime ministers, and that Thatcher and Major had been invited because they were Knights of the Garter and the other two were not.
‘It was a cock-up from start to finish,’ says one of William’s team. One of the groups he cut out of the original list sent over by the Lord Chamberlain’s office were former prime ministers. A group he kept in were Knights of the Garter. What no one noticed was that Thatcher and Major were among the Knights of the Garter. Thatcher’s name vanished early on because it was known she couldn’t attend, which left Major as the only former prime minister. ‘No one spotted it until Roya Nikkhah from the Sunday Telegraph phoned one Saturday and said, “We’ve noticed John Major’s coming and none of the others. Why is that?” I remember my heart sank.’ There was talk about the private office at Buckingham Palace getting in touch with their private offices with a last-minute invitation but Tony Blair then gave an interview saying he was very happy not to be invited and had never expected it. By that time, everyone in the Prince’s office agreed it would be too humiliating and awkward to invite them. ‘That was the only cock-up – and one thing had to go wrong.’
Harry, best man and keeper of the ring, looked immaculate in his Blues and Royals uniform (recently promoted to captain), and helped keep the mood light and informal in the midst of such formality. As Kate and her father and her posse of small attendants began their procession up the aisle to Hubert Parry’s soaring anthem, ‘I Was Glad’, Harry took a peek over his shoulder, to the amusement of the congregation, then turned to his brother, presumably to reassure him she was on her way. The brothers had arrived forty-five minutes early so that they could chat to friends and relatives. It was all so different from their parents’ stiffly formal wedding at St Paul’s thirty years earlier.
Kate could scarcely keep the grin off her face. William was right: she did look beautiful, and her father was a pillar of strength by her side. As they stood alongside William and Harry, and William whispered to Mike, it was clear that he was already like a second son to him. She seemed oblivious to the illustrious figures in the congregation or the television cameras trained on her face. She had eyes for no one but William, and if she felt nervous in front of such a huge audience, she certainly didn’t show it.
The dress – Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen – was a triumph of close-fitting satin and lace, with a nine-foot train, and with it she wore a veil made of layers of ivory silk tulle with a trim of hand-embroidered flowers. It was held in place by a Cartier ‘halo’ tiara, loaned to her by the Queen. Her bouquet was full of symbolism: in the language of flowers, sweet William means gallantry; lily of the valley, return of happiness; hyacinth, constancy of love; and myrtle is the emblem of marriage and love. There was also ivy for fidelity, wedded love, friendship and affection. And no doubt for extra luck, one stem came from a myrtle planted at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight by Queen Victoria in 1845, and a single sprig was from the plant grown from the myrtle used in the Queen’s wedding bouquet in 1947. No detail was too small.
Kate’s sister, Pippa, was her Maid of Honour, also dressed in a figure-hugging Sarah Burton creation (and her bottom became an overnight sensation). It was her job to keep an eye on the four little bridesmaids: Lady Louise Windsor, 7, the Wessexes’ daughter; the Hon. Margarita Armstrong-Jones, 8, the Linleys’ daughter; Grace van Cutsem, 3, Hugh and Rose’s daughter and William’s goddaughter; Eliza Lopes, 3, the Duchess of Cornwall’s granddaughter; and two page boys, Billy Lowther-Pinkerton and Tom Pettifer, Tiggy’s son and William’s godson. Both looked very smart in their little scarlet uniforms.
William was impeccably dressed in the same scarlet. It was the uniform of an Irish Guards Officer, with a blue Garter sash and star, RAF wings and Golden Jubilee medal. He had been uncertain about which uniform to wear, entitled as he is to wear all three services’, but in February the Queen had appointed him to the honorary rank of Colonel of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards – his most senior military appointment. Where he wavered, she did not. ‘I was given a categorical: “No, you’ll wear this!”’ he told Robert Hardman. ‘So you don’t always get what you want [from the Queen], put it that way. But I knew perfectly well that it was for the best. That “no” is a very good “no”. So you just do as you’re told!’
Richard Chartres wisely made no mention of fairytales in his address, although there were echoes of Diana in the choice of some of the music and hymns. He said that, ‘In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and groom as King and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.’ He ended by reading a prayer that he said William and Kate had composed together in preparation for the day.
‘God our Father, we thank you for our families; for the love that we share and for the joy of our marriage. In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on what is real and important in life and help us to be generous with our time and love and energy. Strengthened by our union help us to serve and comfort those who suffer. We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.’
They walked down the aisle together grinning at familiar faces, man and wife (albeit one who had chosen not to ‘obey’), but also Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – a gift from the Queen. She also gave him Scottish and Northern Irish titles – the Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus – but Cambridge was the one he would be commonly called. But if the thousands of fans that greeted them in Canada a couple of months later are anything to go by, for most people they will always be simply Will and Kate.
PARTY AT THE PALACE
What thousands of people had come to see was the kiss on the Buckingham Palace balcony, and it was duly delivered. Not once, but twice, which made the new Duchess giggle and the five hundred thousand or so well-wishers packed into the Mall below, and the thousands more watching it on the big screens in the parks, whoop and cheer with delight. Overhead, the sky was filled with aeroplanes as a Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and RAF Tornados and Typhoons flew past in formation. For the newly-weds, the nerve-racking parts of the day were over. From now on, it was party time.
Inside the Palace their 650 lunch guests awaited them, happily nibbling canapés and admiring the Old Masters on the walls. This first reception was for a mixture of friends, including many of the parents of friends, family and people from William’s official life. They were all bussed over from the Abbey, and William and Kate worked the rooms to make sure that they had a word with all those people not staying for the dinner in the evening. There were speeches; Prince William spoke charmingly about his beautiful bride and thanked his grandmother for her generosity in hosting the reception. Those who knew the Queen had seldom seen her so happy. One described her ‘playful’, another said she was ‘literally skipping’. She had taken a very personal hand in it. Every detail was run past her, the precise canapé menus, the wines, the arrangement of the rooms. She walked through them all and checked that everything was in order, and had many meetings with the Master of the Household about it. She genuinely saw it as her party and she wanted her guests to have the best time possible.
The Prince of Wales humorously reminisced about the groom as a teenager, shut in his room playing his music at full blast for hours on end and refusing to come out. And he talked about the two-fingered response he use
d to get from him whenever he tried to give him advice about the clothes he wore, or when he told him to stop slouching. But for the guests, it could have been any father of the groom affectionately ribbing his son, and there was no doubting the affection.
When the speeches were over and the cakes cut and the champagne drunk, everyone was asked to go into the gardens at the back of the Palace to see the couple off. And there waiting for them, to everyone’s surprise, was his father’s dark blue Aston Martin DB6 Mk II, with a few adjustments courtesy of Harry. It was festooned with heart-shaped balloons and coloured streamers and rosettes, with an L plate on the front and a new number plate on the back – JU5T WED.
As far as the public knew, the day for them had finished with the kiss. So when the Aston Martin appeared, nosing its way slowly out of the Palace gates at 3.35 p.m., with William at the wheel and Kate beside him, those still milling around outside went mad. They’d watched the procession earlier with William and Kate in a 1902 State Landau, followed by all the King’s horses and all the King’s men, and the sight of them smiling and waving from an open-topped classic car – just like any other newly-weds – was sensational. But the new Duke and Duchess had their own surprise in store. As they crept slowly along the Mall to Clarence House, a yellow Sea King helicopter appeared and hovered noisily just a few feet over their heads – a tribute from the RAF to a fellow search and rescue pilot.
It had been William’s idea to borrow the car and his father loved the idea. The person he had really wanted to surprise was Kate, but someone pointed out that she would need to be able to fit into it wearing her dress and only she knew how long the train was, so she was let in on the secret. But the car is very old and very tricky and William is not familiar with it. His greatest worry was that he would drive it out into the Mall in front of two billion people … and stall it. But it was not to be.
The evening party was for 300 of their closest friends and family. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh left the younger generations to it. The Queen had said to William, ‘You don’t really want me and Grandpa there in the evening, do you? So if you don’t mind, we’re going to allow you and your friends to have the run of the place.’ She had invited William and Kate to spend their wedding night at the Palace, which for logistical reasons was sensible, and she personally selected the suite they should stay in and checked that all was in order for them. She chose the Belgian Suite that President Obama and his wife had stayed in, a stunning set of rooms which get the morning light.
As the guests arrived back at the Palace, having gone away for a few hours after the lunch and changed into black tie, they were bagpiped through a candlelit courtyard into pre-dinner drinks where vintage pink champagne and peach bellinis awaited. Kate had changed into another flowing white satin Sarah Burton creation, with a little angora bolero cardigan, and looked radiant. Dinner, at tables of ten in the ballroom, was a veritable feast devised by top chef and restaurateur Anton Mosimann. They began with seafood from Wales, went on to lamb from Highgrove and finished with a trio of mini-puddings – all of it accompanied by distinguished wines. After coffee and petit fours came the speeches and the high spot of the night.
Harry, acting as compère, completely stole the show, with impeccable comic timing and brilliant one-liners. He had everyone in tears of laughter as he hilariously recounted tales from their childhood of being beaten up by his older brother and shot by air rifles, and teased him rotten about everything from his romantic style to his receding hairline. But there were emotional moments too. William had said at his engagement that in giving Kate his mother’s ring, he hoped to include her in all the fun and excitement, and both boys made sure she was part of the evening celebrations, by each making moving tributes to her in the midst of all the mirth.
The father of the bride joked about the time William had almost blown the roof off the house when he landed his helicopter in the garden, and the awkward conversation they had had when he asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage, but he also spoke warmly about William and about how well he fitted into the family. William returned the compliment and spoke movingly about Kate. The final speech was a double-act. Thomas van Straubenzee and James Meade took to the floor and delivered a series of quick gags about their friend, which again had the audience helpless with laughter.
Dancing followed until three o’clock in the morning. For two full hours the Brit Award-winning singer Ellie Goulding and her band played live, then DJs took over with a mixture of music, and the booming bass could be heard halfway down the Mall. The final number was ‘She Loves You’ by the Beatles, which had everyone on the dance floor singing their hearts out, after which they were shepherded out into the gardens once again, for William and Kate to make their second and final departure of the day. This time their going-away car was a bright yellow little Fiat 500 – another surprise for their friends and family – which William had secretly borrowed from David Linley. But since they were spending the night at the Palace, the chauffeur didn’t have far to go. While the guests drunkenly cheered and waved and wished them luck, including both sets of parents – everyone stayed to the very end – they stood up with their heads through the open roof laughing and waving, while they were driven around two corners and delivered to another door. ‘It was simply magical,’ said one guest. ‘The best party ever imaginable.’
Harry, still in party mood, as they all were, then led all the young onto a waiting coach and over to the Goring Hotel where they carried on partying safely and privately until five. The brothers had discussed what might happen when they were kicked out of the Palace and realised that if everyone just spilled out into Mayfair and the usual nightclubs at three in the morning, those places would be crawling with inquisitive diary journalists. Better to keep everyone together, and so they organised an after-party at the Goring.
Nothing gave them greater satisfaction than successfully thwarting the press, and in the case of William’s stag weekend, completely outwitting them. Harry and Guy Pelly organised it and, it was said, at first booked a weekend of watersports in Exmouth, Devon. News of that venue had supposedly been leaked, and so they went to Norfolk instead, almost certainly to the van Cutsems’ estate. The Sun was the first newspaper to get it right. A group of about twelve of William’s best friends drove down to north Devon on the Friday of the last weekend in March, and stayed at Hartland Abbey, a secluded twelfth-century former monastery surrounded by beautiful gardens and parkland that lead to the Atlantic coast. It is owned and lived in by his friend, George Stucley and his family, and although house and gardens are open to the public at times, they took over the whole place and enjoyed complete privacy.
Speculation was also rife about where they would spend their honeymoon, and the Prince’s office were as tight-lipped about that as about the stag do. The bookmakers had Kenya as the favourite, with Scotland and Jordan – where Kate spent a couple of years as a child – as runners-up. Other suggestions were the Caribbean islands of Mustique, Bequia and Necker or Lizard Island off the coast of Queensland. As their helicopter took off from Buckingham Palace the morning after the wedding, it was assumed they were going to one of these locations; if not, then to somewhere equally exotic. But to everyone’s surprise it was announced that very afternoon that after a Bank Holiday weekend in Britain, William was going back to work at Valley, Kate to their cottage and the housekeeping, and the honeymoon would happen at an unspecified date in the future.
The reason for the sudden change of plan was that the hotel where they had chosen to go was fully booked for the period immediately after the wedding. And they were not prepared to ask the hotel for special favours, which would undoubtedly have meant either moving people around or turning some other couple away. ‘There’s no way we’re going to do that,’ said William. ‘It could be their honeymoon.’ Clarence House gave no explanation for the change of plan. If they had given the real reason, it would have allowed the media, frantic to know where they were going, to narrow their search. As it wa
s, when they flew off in a private jet nearly two weeks later, their destination took the bookies by surprise – but it didn’t take the press long to figure out that they had flown to the Seychelles. What they didn’t know was which of the many small islands they had hopped to from the mainland.
They had chosen North Island. It fitted everything they were looking for, and the Seychelles’ government was very happy to help keep the media at bay. In the Seychelles it’s against the law to take someone’s photograph without their permission – and just to be sure, the local coastguards patrolled off-shore around the island for the ten days William and Kate stayed there. The day before they left they personally thanked the individual coastguards.