Post by Kiwithrottlejockey on Nov 25, 2010 21:49:37 GMT 12
Wills and Kate set a date
Associated Press | 9:13AM - 24 November 2010
BRITAIN's Prince William is to marry his fiancee Kate Middleton on Friday April 29 next year at London's Westminster Abbey, the 1000-year-old church where the funeral was held for his mother Princess Diana.
William, son of heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and the late Diana, announced his engagement to long-term girlfriend Middleton last week after a courtship lasting nearly a decade.
"We know that the world will be watching on April 29 and the couple are very, very keen indeed that the spectacle should be a classic example of what Britain does best," Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, William's private secretary told reporters.
Britain is facing sharp cuts in public spending and Lowther-Pinkerton said that the royal family and the Middletons would pay for the service, reception and honeymoon.
He described the couple, both 28, as "over the moon" about their forthcoming marriage.
Westminster Abbey has been the site of coronations since William the Conqueror was crowned there in 1066 after the Norman invasion. The current monarch, Queen Elizabeth, was married there in 1947 and a teenaged William attended his mother Diana's 1997 funeral at the Abbey after she died in a Paris car crash.
"The couple were moved to choose the venue because of its staggering beauty, its 1000-year royal history and in spite of its overall size, its relative intimacy," Lowther-Pinkerton said. "The venue has long associations with the royal family — it's in many ways the royal family's church — and of course with Prince William personally."
STRIKING A BALANCE
Retail researchers have estimated that the wedding could give a US$1 billion boost to the British economy through the sale of mementoes and increased tourism.
Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed that April 29 would be a public holiday, meaning Britons will enjoy a four-day break over the May Day weekend.
However, the couple want to combine pageantry with prudence for their wedding day.
"Prince William and Miss Middleton want to ensure that a balance is struck between an enjoyable day and the current economic situation," Lowther-Pinkerton said.
"To that end, the royal family and the Middleton family will pay for the wedding."
A royal aide said the couple had always wanted a spring wedding and for it to be held on a Friday.
The wedding will come less than a week before the likely date of a referendum on moves to change the voting system for Britain's parliament and some commentators have said it risked disrupting campaigning. However, a royal aide said Cameron was very content with the date.
"The wedding of Kate and William will be a happy and momentous occasion," Cameron said in a statement.
"We want to mark the day as one of national celebration, a public holiday will ensure the most people possible will have a chance to celebrate on the day.
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ROYAL WEDDING FACTS
- The Abbey became a popular venue for royal weddings when Princess Patricia of Connaught chose it for her marriage to the Honourable Alexander Ramsay in 1919.
- It was the first time for 650 years that the Abbey had been used for a royal wedding.
- Westminster Abbey was chosen for the marriage of King George V's daughter (Mary, Princess Royal) to Viscount Lascelles (later Earl of Harewood) in February 1922.
- Two of George V's sons married at the Abbey — Prince Albert, Duke of York (later King George VI) to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother) in April 1923 and Prince George, Duke of Kent married Princess Marina of Greece there in November 1934. In April 2002, the Queen Mother's funeral service took place at Westminster Abbey. She died on March 30 at the age of 101.
- After World War Two, Westminster Abbey was the scene of the marriage of Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II) and Prince Philip on Nov. 20, 1947.
- Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones (later Earl of Snowdon) were married there in May 1960. Three years later Princess Alexandra married Angus Ogilvy in April 1963.
- Princess Anne (now The Princess Royal) and Captain Mark Phillips were married there in November 1973. Prince Andrew (now The Duke of York) and Miss Sarah Ferguson were married there in July 1986.
- Although St. Paul's Cathedral was the venue for the wedding of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, Westminster Abbey was the venue for the funeral service of Diana in September 1997 just days after she was killed in a car crash in Paris.
- Around 960 A.D Dunstan, Bishop of London, established a group of Benedictine monks on "Thorney Island", an isolated marshy area of land on the banks of the River Thames.
- Edward the Confessor built a new church on the site, which was consecrated in 1065. Edward died a few days after the consecration, was buried in the Abbey and later made a saint.
- Henry III pulled down the whole church in 1245 (except the nave) and replaced it with the present Abbey in the pointed Gothic style of the period.
- Since William the Conquerer every English sovereign has been crowned in the Abbey with the exception of Edward V and every British sovereign since the union of the English and Scottish Crowns in 1603, with the exception of Edward VIII.
- Edward V was deposed and probably murdered by his uncle Richard III. Edward VIII abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Many kings and queens are buried near the shrine of Edward the Confessor or in Henry VII's chapel.
- The last sovereign to be buried in the Abbey was George II (died 1760); since then they have been buried at Windsor Castle.
- The Abbey is crowded with the tombs and memorials of famous British subjects, including Isaac Newton, David Livingstone, and Ernest Rutherford.
- Part of the south transept is known as Poets' Corner and includes the tombs of Geoffrey Chaucer, Ben Jonson (who was buried upright), John Dryden, Robert Browning, and many others.
- The north transept has memorials to British statesmen. The grave of the "Unknown Warrior," whose remains were brought from Flanders, Belgium in 1920, is in the centre of the nave near the west door.