The Royal Family will gather at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday, 5 March to honour Prince Charles and the 50th anniversary of his investiture as Prince of Wales.
The Queen will host a daytime reception to mark the milestone, with the Duchess of Cornwall, the Princess Royal, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex joining the Prince of Wales to celebrate. This will be the first event of 2019 that Prince Charles’s sons and their wives will attend together.
“This special reception will mark the Prince of Wales’s fifty years of service to Wales, the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, and will be an opportunity to celebrate a range of Welsh charities, organisations and businesses,” Buckingham Palace said.
The guest list will include representatives from the Prince of Wales’s Welsh charities and patronages such as the Prince’s Trust Cymru, Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, and the BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales.
The Archbishop of Canterbury will give a speech at the reception, and guests will enjoy a musical performance by the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
A special piece has been written for the 50th anniversary by Welsh composer Paul Mealor, inspired by the legend of the Lady of Llyn y Fan, a mountain lake near Prince Charles’ Welsh home, Llwynywermod in Carmarthenshire.
Prince Charles was created the Prince of Wales on 26 July 1958 at the age of nine, but he wasn’t formally invested until he was 20. The ceremony took place at Caernarfon Castle in Wales on 11 July 1969, and guests at the anniversary reception will be able to view the investiture regalia worn by the Prince of Wales on that day.
This includes the Investiture Coronet, Sword, Ring and Rod, as well as the Letters Patent for the creation of Charles, Duke of Cornwall as Prince of Wales in 1958.
