Loyal or royal? Harry’s Eton pals’ big day dilemma

WHILE Meghan Markle’s halfsister, Samantha Grant, publicly complains that she and her brother, Thomas, have not been invited to the Royal Wedding, Prince Harry’s schoolfriends have the opposite problem.

They are spoilt for choice, as one of their fellow Old Etonians is getting married the same day — and refuses to change the date.

Fund manager George Birch Reynardson, who was in Harry’s year at Eton and shares many of the same chums, had already booked Saturday, May 19, for his wedding to Sophia Davies, a pal of the Prince’s ex-girlfriend Cressida Bonas.

George and Sophia are now said to see the clash as a ‘royalty or loyalty’ challenge for their friends.

‘They’d already sent the invitations out,’ reveals fellow Old Etonian George Frost, son of the celebrated late broadcaster Sir David. ‘They were saying: “Are people going to be loyal or royal?” ’

Frost, who created the Duppy Share rum brand, is invited only to the non-royal nuptials. He adds: ‘I just love the idea of everyone saying, “Yes, I can’t wait to come [to George’s wedding],” and then . . . If I was invited to the Royal Wedding, I’d go with my mum, because I owe it to her, but I’d be cursing every step of the way.’

George’s father, Tom Birch Reynardson, is a former High Sheriff of Oxfordshire and friends likely to have been invited to both weddings include beef baron Lord Vestey and his children.

Harry and Meghan had to choose their big day in agreement with the Queen. Royal weddings are often held on a Friday, but this would have prompted calls for the Government to grant a bank holiday.

George is not the only one staging a rival wedding: television chef Angela Hartnett had booked the same date to tie the knot with fellow Gordon Ramsay protege Neil Borthwick.

‘ They’re getting married at 3 o’clock at a lovely church in Shoreditch [East London],’ discloses Ewan Venters, chief executive of royal grocer Fortnum & Mason. ‘It’s the alternative royal wedding.

‘Even if I had been invited to the Royal Wedding, I was already committed to Angela. She just decided: loyalty is loyalty.’