Kensington Palace has announced that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will get married on Saturday 19th May.
The confirmation of the exact date follows the announcement in November that the couple will marry in St George’s Chapel located in the grounds of Windsor Castle.
The choice of venue means the wedding will be a much smaller affair than that of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2011 when they got married at Westminster Abbey.
The palace also confirmed that Ms Markle is a protestant and will be baptised and confirmed before the wedding.
The couple has said they want to involve the public in their big day and details are being worked out on how to achieve this, although it is reported that the wedding will be televised.
Windsor Castle has hosted many royal weddings including that of The Queen’s youngest son, Prince Edward to Sophie Rhys-Jones.
Taking place on 19 June 1999, the couple wished that the wedding would not be a state affair. The smaller occasion meant that politicians, like Prime Minister Tony Blair, were not invited. There was also no military or ceremonial state involvement.
Prince Charles and Prince Andrew acted in the ‘Best Man’ role and for 20 minutes before the ceremony walked past well-wishers.
After the ceremony, the newly created Earl and Countess of Wessex rode past thousands of onlookers in a horse-drawn carriage to St. George’s Hall where the reception was to be held.
St. George’s Chapel holds 800 people but Edward and Sophie’s wedding had around 550 guests. The broadcast is estimated to have brought in approximately 200 million viewers.
I am So Excited about Prince Harry and Meghan’s Wedding!! I know it will be a Wonderful day on May 19!!
Glad it’s on a weekend so I can record it!
Why are Prince Harry and Meghan Markle having an Anglican wedding? In 2005, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles were prohibited from marrying in the Church of England because the Church teaches that the remarriage of divorcés with a living ex-spouse is doctrinally, morally, and theologically impermissible. As a consequence, the Prince and his bride were married in a register office — something problematic in itself since the view of the Government’s legal advisors had been, up until then and restated as recently as the Major premiership, that the Marriage Acts forbade the civil marriage of royals. Constitutional experts such as Dr Stephen Cretney QC maintain that the Prince and Mrs Parker Bowles are not legally married. To make it worse, the couple could have obviated such serious question marks over their status by marrying in the Church of Scotland, as the Princess Royal did in 1992.
Now we have the Church agreeing to marry a couple with exactly the same doctrinal, moral, and theological impediment, without so much as a whisper of an explanation as to why. And as I have pointed out, these matters can have very significant constitutional repercussions. The Church of England is known politely for its “Anglican fudge” on theology, but it is clear that it makes it up as it goes along when it comes to royal marriage.