Your invitation is in the post... or is it?
Lottie Smith was tasked with creating 600 invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
If you find a formal-looking envelope among your mail this morning, you may be one of 600 guests invited to attend Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding. The guest list has been jealously guarded: Lottie Small, a 24-year-old printer, has revealed she was entrusted with the secret and has not even spilled the beans to her own mother
IT IS one of the best-kept secrets in Britain: who will be the lucky few invited to share Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding day from the comfort of a Windsor Castle pew?
Today, the answer will come, in the form of a thick envelope bearing the mark of the Palace.
As a final guest list was drawn up by the couple and their inner circle, it emerged one young woman has been party to the full guest list, and entrusted with keeping it strictly private.
Lottie Small, a 24-year-old former intern at a Royal Warrant-holding printing company, has the duty of creating 600 invitations for the Prince and his bride-to-be. And the hardest part? Not even being allowed to tell her mother.
Miss Small, who said she “squealed a little bit” when she was asked to take on the all-important job, only recently finished her apprenticeship with Barnard & Westwood, a printing firm that holds Royal Warrants from the Queen and the Prince of Wales.
Miss Small, one of only a handful to know the details before today, made 600 die-stamped, embossed invita-
‘With anything else, she’d be the first one I would call and she’d share in my excitement’
tions for the St George’s Chapel service, which will begin landing on doormats from this morning.
“Unbelievably excited” to be entrusted with the job, she was banned from telling anyone, working alone to perfect the invitations.
“The worst thing is keeping it from Mum,” she said. “With anything else, she’d be the first person I would call and she’d share in my excitement.”
The announcement will fire the starting gun on speculation about royal “snubs”, with the couple expected to focus on family and friends over international dignitaries and statesmen.
While Prince William and the then Kate Middleton invited world leaders and diplomatic figures to their Westminster Abbey state wedding, Prince Harry, currently the fifth-in-line, will endure less pressure to be formal.
Barack and Michelle Obama have been widely predicted to be invited due to a blossoming friendship with the couple, along with Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, and his wife, while President Trump, whom the former actress has previously criticised, is unlikely to attend.
A wide circle of friends will make up one of the most extraordinary congregations in St George’s Chapel history, from the Prince’s military friends to Ms Markle’s fellow actors.
From this morning, that inner circle of trusted accomplices will expand to include the postmen and women of Britain, who will deliver the unmistakaconcession ble envelopes to their recipients. Kensington Palace yesterday confirmed that 600 guests will be invited to the Windsor Castle service on May 19, followed by an afternoon reception in St George’s Hall thrown by the Queen.
In the evening, 200 close friends and family will attend Frogmore House for a party thrown by the Prince of Wales.
Printed using machinery from the Thirties, the die-cast embossed white card has been issued under the Prince of Wales’s name and bears his heraldic feathers embossed in gold at the top. A to tradition for a couple better known for their modern approach, the invitations are printed in American ink on English paper.
Miss Small’s work is likely to meet the approval of the Prince of Wales, with a shared attitude to the preservation of traditional skills and crafts.
Originally an intern at the printing company, founded after the First World War by an injured soldier, Miss Small joined the apprentice scheme after gaining a BA Hons in hand embroidery at the Royal School of Needlework.