Kate & William 10 years married
the royal family. This let him test his equipment and angles. Crucially, it would help him gauge how long the required shots (like any couple, Kate and William had a list of ‘must-haves’) would take.
This rehearsal sounds a bit Carry On Royal Wedding. ‘All the parts were played by my assistants and people from the palace. I did tell them, “Look, don’t just walk in and take your positions quickly. We want this to be as close as possible to the real thing.” They played along so well. Just as I was about to take the photograph, someone said, “Oh, there’s a bridesmaid missing,” and there was. She was behind the curtain, hiding because she was shy. That led to me having to go over and coax this 35-year-old, who was down on her knees, out from behind the curtain.’ The upshot of the rehearsal was that Hugo worked out the minimum time he’d need would be 33 minutes. Out came the palace wedding schedules. ‘They said, “You can have 29.”’
There is much laughter today as Hugo recalls the most important commission of his life (‘Yes, it did change everything’). He had photographed members of the royal family (he was the photographer at Prince Charles’s wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles) and had experience working in the palaces. You do pick up a tip or too, he jokes. ‘The rule is that if you see a corgi, you know Her Majesty is only a few steps away. Once at Windsor Castle, I was scrabbling around on the floor, trying to plug a light into a socket, when the cold, wet nose of a corgi offered some “assistance”.’
He can’t talk much about his interactions with the happy couple themselves, but they were very much involved in planning the pictures – Kate in particular, because she’s a keen amateur photographer. ‘Her feeling was that we should work with the amazing architecture of the room.’
So he and his team of six moved in with all their equipment. ‘It was all set up and left there overnight, which is unusual. It felt odd going back to my home in Kensington without it. The next morning we arrived at the palace on bicycles, because the roads were closed.’ As the wedding got underway in the Abbey, Hugo and co waited at the palace. Yes there were nerves – and mounting panic as the wedding party failed to arrive on time. ‘There were more guests than expected on the steps of Buckingham Palace, so getting everyone up to the Throne Room took longer. I think I lost two minutes. They were the longest two minutes you can imagine.’
In the event the guests were more amenable than the rehearsal stand-ins had been. ‘None of the bridesmaids hid behind the curtains.’ What was the atmosphere like? ‘Terrific,’ he says. ‘Everyone was chatting, laughing, just like any other wedding.’
His two portraits went round the world, even before he had got home. Now the ones selected are in the history books. And the rest? The happy couple got to keep them for themselves, very private reminders of a most public day.