A wedding to redef ine royalty
IT WAS a royal wedding quite unlike any other. Take a bold American bride who has navigated her own way on to the world stage and a British Prince whose life has been ordained by history.
Add in a gospel choir, a sizzler of a sermon by a highly animated preacher and a congregation that featured nearly as much Hollywood royalty as the real thing.
Then seal it with a passionate clincher of a kiss – no reticence, no having to be asked twice – at the top of the ancient West Steps of St George’s Chapel in Windsor.
These were the scenes yesterday as Meghan Markle defied pretty much all the conventions that bind a royal bride to marry Prince Harry.
In a £100,000 white silk Givenchy dress of pure medieval simplicity and demure romanticism, she made a dramatic solo journey down the aisle to meet her groom.
Supported in her final steps by
Prince Charles, she also chose not to be formally given away at the altar.
Instead, she took her husband-tobe by the hand herself and flashed him a huge smile as he raised her veil from her face. When he bashfully whispered: ‘You look amazing,’ she smiled, and then she smiled some more.
In truth, the Queen’s grandson, with his best man and brother by his side, and his closest family all around, looked far more nervous, damp-eyed and overawed by the occasion than Meghan, with just her mother Doria Ragland in support.
But if the Markle family was barely in evidence, its influence was huge. The service swiftly switched from the traditional tenets of a royal marriage – the opening
hymn, Lord Of All Hopefulness, Lord Of All Joy, and a reading from the Song of Solomon – to something more multi-cultural.
Within the ancient royal reaches of St George’s Chapel, in the castle the Queen most considers home, American Bishop Michael Curry borrowed from the words of Martin Luther King. He spoke about the power of love to make an old world new again before a gospel choir, The Kingdom Singers, gave a rendition of the 1961 Ben E King soul standard Stand By Me.
It made for a ceremony with a pulse-quickening sense of change, one which said the bride’s heritage was every bit the equal of the groom’s. The sight of Mrs Ragland, a Los Angeles yoga teacher, on the arm of the Prince of Wales, her tiny nose stud still in place and her hair in waves zinging out from beneath an austere pale green hat, made that clear too.
There was also much that was traditional, a glorious tumble of 10 tiny attendants – four page boys and six bridesmaids including four-year-old Prince George and three-year-old Princess Charlotte – dense crowds of royal wedding watchers crammed into Windsor’s pretty streets and mile upon mile of bunting. There was a carriage procession in an Ascot Landau pulled by an immaculate team of
AS MEGHAN approached the altar, Harry turned to Prince Charles, who had escorted his bride for the last part of her walk down the aisle, and said: ‘Thank you, Pa.’ The Prince of Wales had, of course, stepped into the role at the last moment as Meghan’s father, Thomas, was unable to attend because of health problems.