“Royal weddings,” as Sam Knight wrote recently for this Web site, “brew up like mostly benevolent hurricanes.” And the storm that is the wedding of Henry Charles Albert David Mountbatten-Windsor, a prince who is sixth in line to the British throne, and Meghan Markle, an American actress and former life-style blogger, makes landfall today. The wedding will take place at St. George’s Chapel, on the grounds of Windsor Castle, and preparations have been in full swing for weeks, both inside and outside the castle walls. The BBC has estimated that, in addition to the six hundred guests invited to the wedding and the twenty-five hundred members of the public invited to view the arrivals procession, a crowd of a hundred thousand will gather in Windsor to see what it can of the pageantry and, presumably, to wish the couple well, albeit from a distance.
More from The New Yorker on the royal wedding.
The photographer Immo Klink is on the ground in Windsor, capturing the celebration in the streets, and we will be posting his photos throughout the day. Despite the wedding’s much-noted renegade details, such as its non-fruitcake cake, a departure from centuries of tradition, and the absence of Markle’s father, each aspect of the ceremony will proceed according to a perfectly plotted plan. The gilded carriages will arrive, the dress will be revealed, the bride will reportedly be walked down the aisle by her mother and Prince Charles, and the vows will follow the old liturgy. Hours later, the newlyweds are expected to attend a celebration with two hundred friends and family members. Throughout the rest of Great Britain, non-royals are partaking in a sort of nationwide trickle-down wedding reception—less grand but perhaps more interesting. Much has been made of the dash of modernity that Markle will bring to the Royal Family, but even the most modern of monarchies is nothing without its faithful subjects.
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