Revealed: Meghan’s £100k wedding dress
Harry’s tribute to Diana with roles for the Spencer family
IT’S the long-awaited answer to the other question onlookers have been asking since the royal engagement: Yes, Meghan Markle’s father will give her away. Proud Meghan has arranged for both parents to have major roles at the wedding – and the divorced couple will even meet the Queen for tea ahead of the May 19 ceremony.
Yoga teacher Doria Ragland and former Hollywood lighting director Thomas Markle will travel to the UK from the US during the previous week.
They will be introduced to all senior members of the Royal Family including the monarch, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
It is thought the Queen insisted on it to make Meghan’s parents, neither of whom are used to being in the public eye – or, indeed, even speaking to each other – feel welcome.
Remarkably, it will be the first time that Prince Harry will meet his fiancee’s father. Although the pair have chatted on the phone, he has never made the journey to Mexico where Mr Markle lives as a virtual recluse.
In a major departure from tradition, Miss Ragland, 61, will accompany her daughter by car to St George’s Chapel on the day of her wedding, after spending the night with the woman she still calls ‘flower’ at a mystery location.
Mr Markle, 72, who is likely to be staying at Windsor Castle, will meet his daughter at St George’s Chapel to walk her down the aisle. A Kensington Palace spokesman said: ‘Prince Harry and Ms Markle are very much looking forward to welcoming Ms Markle’s parents to Windsor for the wedding. Both of the bride’s parents will have important roles in the PRINCE Harry has ensured that his late mother’s family will play a key role on his big day as a way of ‘celebrating the memory’ of Diana, Princess of Wales.
All three of her siblings – Earl Spencer, Lady Jane Fellowes and Lady Sarah McCorquodale – will be guests, along with their families.
Lady Jane, 61, who is married to the Queen’s former assistant private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, will also give a reading.
Movingly, Diana was a bridesmaid at her 1978 wedding at Westminster Abbey. And it was Lady Jane, along with her sister, Lady Sarah, who accompanied Prince Charles to Paris to repatriate their sister’s body in 1997. The decision to ask her to do a reading on behalf of the wedding. Ms Markle is delighted to have her parents by her side on this important and happy occasion.’
On the day, Meghan and her mother will leave their overnight base together in one of the Queen’s official cars and drive to Windsor, offering the public and television viewers the first glimpse of Meghan’s dress as she enters the Windsor Castle precinct down the Long Walk.
Shortly before noon, their car will stop briefly by Galilee Porch to allow Miss Ragland to get out. She will enter the chapel via the porch, the Royal Family’s official entrance.
Meghan’s pageboys and bridesmaids will then join the bride so that they can arrive together at the front of the chapel, where her father will be waiting for her.
The bride-to-be is close to both her parents. They divorced when she was six and although she lived with her mother in Los Angeles, she also spent a great deal of time with her father while she was growing up. family is also a tactful one. For while Harry’s uncle, Earl Spencer, gave an address at Diana’s funeral, he used the occasion to launch a thinlyveiled attack on the Royal Family.
In it, he said: ‘On behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.’
A Kensington Palace spokesman said: ‘In addition to having the support of the Queen, his father the Prince of Wales, and his brother Prince William as best man, Prince Harry is also keen to involve his mother’s family in his wedding.’