The royal wedding of Harry and Meghan Markle will take place in less than a week, and the world is eagerly waiting. A number of the details are still being kept carefully under wraps, but the basics of the wedding have been released or leaked.
The wedding will take place on Saturday, May 19, 2018, at St. George’s Chapel on the grounds of the famous Windsor Castle. It was here that Prince Harry was christened, and the couple has described it as a “very special place” for them in their relationship so far. The service will begin at noon, and Markle will make her way to the castle with her mother, Doria Ragland. Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle, will then walk her down the aisle. Until that moment, Harry will not have seen Markle’s wedding dress.
Unlike Kate Middleton’s wedding, Markel will not have a maid of honor and will follow British royal wedding tradition by having children as her bridesmaids. Reverend David Conner, dean of Windsor, will lead the service, but the actual marriage will be performed by Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury. The ceremony will include choral and gospel music. Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason is set to perform. The actual vows are traditionally read from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, but both Princess Diana and Kate Middleton omitted the traditional promise of a wife to obey her husband. There is no word yet as to whether Markle will include the line or not.
Once the wedding itself is complete, the newlywed couple will take a carriage tour through Windsor to include the members of the public who came to the wedding. St. George’s Chapel can only fit 600 guests, as opposed to the 2,000 people that Westminster Abbey can hold, but roughly 1,200 members of the public have been invited to the grounds of Windsor Castle to watch the couple arrive and depart from the wedding. The 600 official guests will adjourn to St. Michael’s Hall for the reception, and in a break from tradition, Markel is planning to give a speech. A second reception for 200 of those guests will be held less than a mile from Windsor Castle. This will be hosted by Prince Charles at Frogmore House, and the menu is said to include lemon and elderflower cake.
This wedding will not be quite the spectacle that Kate Middleton and Prince William’s marriage was, but hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the Atlantic are still waiting eagerly to hear the latest royal couple finally say “I do.”