London:
With fanfare and flags under cool, gray skies, Prince William and his longtime girlfriend, Kate Middleton, were married on Friday in one of the largest and most- watched events here in decades -- an interlude of romance in a time of austerity and a moment that will shape the future of the British monarchy. (In Pics: Kate & William, Just Married)
Just 90 minutes after they completed their wedding service, the couple stepped onto a balcony at Buckingham Palace, flanked by the royal family, to greet an enormous crowd stretching along The Mall toward Trafalgar Square -- a traditional moment at royal weddings. When they kissed for the first time in public as a married couple, a cheer went up from the crowd and the prince blushed. (Watch: On the Balcony, Two Kisses | See Pics)
Then -- also a recent tradition -- the newlyweds peered skyward to observe a 66-year-old Lancaster bomber from the Second World War flanked by Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes from the same era flying over the palace in salute. While they waited, they kissed again and the crowd roared. (Watch: The Wedding's best moments)
In one brief morning, the ceremony brought a sense of pomp and pageant to Britain's straitened circumstances, lifting the mood of many and seeming to strengthen the royal family's enduring struggle against skeptics critical of its unelected and privileged status in a constitutional monarchy that offers monarchs little real power. (Complete coverage of the wedding)
A little over one hour after they arrived at Westminster Abbey to be married, the newlyweds emerged on a red carpet onto the streets to a peal of bells, stepping into a 99-year-old, open, horse-drawn carriage. They had started the ceremony as a prince and what the British call a commoner. They emerged as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, their new titles granted earlier on Friday by Queen Elizabeth II. (Watch: Kate-William's carriage ride)
As much as the ceremony itself, Britons and many others had been fascinated by the closely held secret of what Miss Middleton's wedding dress would look like. The curiosity was satisfied when she rode to the abbey wearing a creation by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen in white and ivory, with a two-meter train. Traveling in a Rolls Royce limousine escorted by her father, Michael Middleton, she wore a delicate veil with intricate lace on the neckline and a diamond tiara lent for the occasion by Queen Elizabeth. (In Pics: 'Flawless Dress' gets rave reviews | Read)
The ceremony -- a British specialty in the choreography of royalty -- was designed as much to celebrate their marriage as to inject national pride after years of discord and divorce within the queen's family. Reveling in the pageantry after the ceremony in the abbey, the couple waved to jubilant crowds as their procession, escorted by equestrian guardsmen in scarlet tunics and silver breastplates, traversed the streets of London toward Buckingham Palace. (Watch: Kate's walk down the aisle)
Their open landau was closely followed by a closed carriage for the queen and her husband, Prince Philip. For a time, the streets more used to black cabs and trundling red buses echoed to the clip-clop of hooves from trotting chargers and antique carriages. Flanked by liveried footmen in gold and red tunics, the newly married couple smiled and waved, offering what some commentators have depicted as a more open and modern visage of the monarchy once dismissed as aloof. On the final stretch of their brief, first journey as man and wife, the couple passed along the broad ceremonial avenue called The Mall leading to the palace, with the national anthem playing, the crowds cheering and, after fears of rain, a sliver of sunlight nudging past the clouds.
The wedding service had begun with a psalm and a hymn, "Guide me, O Thou Great Redeemer." The couple stood side by side before the altar. As she arrived to join him, William whispered to her, and onlookers said he seemed to be saying, "You look beautiful."
The service followed Anglican tradition, with the prince and Miss Middleton both declaring "I will" to the wedding vows pronounced by the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual head of the Anglican denomination. Miss Middleton did not pledge to "obey" Prince William, as was once usual, but instead to "love, comfort, honour and keep" him.
"I pronounce that they be man and wife together," the archbishop said. The service continued with the hymn "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling." Some onlookers noted that while the prince placed a wedding ring on his bride's finger, she did not reciprocate the gesture.
"With this ring I thee wed; with my body I thee honour; and all my worldly goods with thee I share," William said, repeating the words of the archbishop.
After the ceremony the couple were to host a reception at Buckingham Palace. Before the service, in ascending order of royal rank, Miss Middleton's new in-laws-to-be and members her own family had driven to the abbey in a variety of Rolls Royce, Bentley and Jaguar cars, cheered on by crowds standing 10 or 15 deep along the way. Just before the bride reached the abbey, the queen arrived wearing a primrose dress and hat and accompanied by Prince Philip at the same place they were married in 1947 and where she was crowned in 1953.
For the last time as a bachelor, William, the second in line to the throne, left his father's residence, Clarence House, to travel with his younger brother, Prince Harry, his best man, to marry Miss Middleton, the daughter of a millionaire couple who made their money with an Internet business -- a fusion, in British parlance, of a commoner and, potentially, a future king.
Wearing a bright red military uniform as Colonel of the Irish Guards, the prince travelled in a plum-coloured Bentley limousine. Bells pealed and cheering crowds lined the Mall as his procession -- the limousine, a lone motorcycle outrider and a single SUV carrying security personnel -- drove past.
The couple's relationship, which began when they were both students of art history at St. Andrews University in Scotland more than nine years ago, has been broadly welcomed among Britons who have followed the royal family through tortured years of dashed hopes and scandal, much of it centring on the doomed marriage of William's mother, Princess Diana, to his father, Prince Charles.
Charles himself attended the ceremony with his second wife, the former Camilla Parker-Bowles, now the duchess of Cornwall, whom he married in 2005 and who was once criticized by Diana as the "third person" in her marriage.
Earlier on Friday, the queen announced that William would assume three new titles to be shared with Miss Middleton -- the Duke of Cambridge, the Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus. A dukedom is the highest rank in British peerage.
Miss Middleton will be known after her marriage as the Duchess of Cambridge, but she will also have the titles the Countess of Strathearn and Baroness Carrickfergus. According to British protocol, she will not be able to formally call herself Princess Catherine because she was not born a princess.
Newspaper headlines feted the wedding on Friday with words like "storybook" and "fairytale" -- terms that were applied in earlier times to the marriage of Charles and Diana in 1981 at St. Paul's Cathedral, an event that also seized the nation with enthusiasm.
"The transition of Miss Middleton from a young woman from the Home Counties to being our future queen is the stuff of fairy tales," said the conservative Daily Telegraph.
But some struck a note of caution. "These are tough times for millions of British people," The Guardian newspaper said in an editorial. "This is not a day for demented princess worship or for in-your-face state extravagance. Even if it was, the recent past inevitably casts a shadow over the occasion. As far as dream royal weddings are concerned, Britain is a once-bitten-twice-shy country."
Hundreds of thousands of people converged Friday on London's streets, craning for a glimpse of the royal family and the 1,900 other invited guests holding the hottest ticket in town inviting them to the ceremony at the centuries-old abbey. (In Pics: The guest list | Who wore what)
The early arrivals -- queens, kings, dukes and emirs arrived later -- filed into the abbey under the soaring columns supporting its 102-foot-high Gothic vault, treading carefully along a red carpet, many of the women wearing bright, broad-brimmed hats. As the morning progressed, the bride's family and junior members of the royal family travelled to Westminster Abbey.
Inside, the abbey was transformed by four tons of foliage, including eight 20-foot-high English field maple trees. The abbey has been the coronation church since 1066 and 17 monarchs are buried there, according to its Web site. Construction of the present-day building began in 1245 during the reign of Henry III.
Despite falling overnight temperatures, thousands of spectators had been camping out for two days in tents festooned with the Union Jack to secure a good view of the pageantry. Tens of thousands more people gathered to watch the ceremonies on huge television screens in venues like Hyde Park.
The closely scripted event began with the arrival of some members of the congregation at 8:15 a.m., watched by 5,000 police officers and chronicled by an estimated 8,500 journalists and support staff members from around the world.
Hundreds of millions tuned in on television around the world, and dozens of temporary studios, filled with presenters speaking dozens of languages, have been built against the backdrop of a floodlit Buckingham Palace, one of the queen's homes and, for many, the focus of the British monarchy.
With many Britons facing hard times because of government austerity plans, the wedding has been pitched by politicians as an occasion for national celebration and rejuvenation amid the economic gloom. The wedding day has been declared a public holiday and more than 5,000 people have been given official permission to close off roads for street parties. Some have taken the opportunity for unlikely rebels.
Hugo Millington-Drake, 21, a student, walked down Parliament Street in a full tuxedo, with bow tie, and a bowler hat. "If I wasn't invited I thought I would at least dress up," he said, adding that he had been separated from other formally dressed friends. Mr. Millington-Drake said that he did not usually attend royal events, but that "everyone is here and it's an excuse to drink Pimm's at 8 a.m. And it's the fairytale -- the commoner becoming princess. Actually, I hate that word, 'commoner,' but you know what I mean. These two are really in love, unlike Charles and Diana."
The new royal couple have also set a different tone, living together before their marriage at a remote Royal Air Force base on the island of Anglesey, where William, 28, is based as a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot.
Britain's often-intrusive press has granted them a degree of privacy, both in the early days of their relationship at St. Andrews and since then. While their relationship was widely known, it was only in December 2006 that Miss Middleton, now 29, attended William's final parade at Sandhurst, Britain's premier military academy.
In 2007, the couple seemed to drift briefly apart for several months before reuniting.
For some, their relationship has been haunted by comparisons with the travails of Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, a year after her glaringly public divorce from Charles.
Diana had been popular among many Britons. The queen's stiff and formal initial response to her death seemed to divide the nation and even threaten the monarchy.
Indeed, even now, the memory of Diana rarely seems far away. Her brother, Earl Spencer, was among the guests on Friday at Westminster Abbey, where he addressed her funeral service with an emotional eulogy in 1997.
When the royal family announced the wedding plans last November, William gave Miss Middleton the sapphire and diamond ring that his father had given his mother for their engagement, saying it was "my way of making sure my mother didn't miss out on today and the excitement."
Just 90 minutes after they completed their wedding service, the couple stepped onto a balcony at Buckingham Palace, flanked by the royal family, to greet an enormous crowd stretching along The Mall toward Trafalgar Square -- a traditional moment at royal weddings. When they kissed for the first time in public as a married couple, a cheer went up from the crowd and the prince blushed. (Watch: On the Balcony, Two Kisses | See Pics)
Then -- also a recent tradition -- the newlyweds peered skyward to observe a 66-year-old Lancaster bomber from the Second World War flanked by Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes from the same era flying over the palace in salute. While they waited, they kissed again and the crowd roared. (Watch: The Wedding's best moments)
In one brief morning, the ceremony brought a sense of pomp and pageant to Britain's straitened circumstances, lifting the mood of many and seeming to strengthen the royal family's enduring struggle against skeptics critical of its unelected and privileged status in a constitutional monarchy that offers monarchs little real power. (Complete coverage of the wedding)
A little over one hour after they arrived at Westminster Abbey to be married, the newlyweds emerged on a red carpet onto the streets to a peal of bells, stepping into a 99-year-old, open, horse-drawn carriage. They had started the ceremony as a prince and what the British call a commoner. They emerged as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, their new titles granted earlier on Friday by Queen Elizabeth II. (Watch: Kate-William's carriage ride)
As much as the ceremony itself, Britons and many others had been fascinated by the closely held secret of what Miss Middleton's wedding dress would look like. The curiosity was satisfied when she rode to the abbey wearing a creation by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen in white and ivory, with a two-meter train. Traveling in a Rolls Royce limousine escorted by her father, Michael Middleton, she wore a delicate veil with intricate lace on the neckline and a diamond tiara lent for the occasion by Queen Elizabeth. (In Pics: 'Flawless Dress' gets rave reviews | Read)
The ceremony -- a British specialty in the choreography of royalty -- was designed as much to celebrate their marriage as to inject national pride after years of discord and divorce within the queen's family. Reveling in the pageantry after the ceremony in the abbey, the couple waved to jubilant crowds as their procession, escorted by equestrian guardsmen in scarlet tunics and silver breastplates, traversed the streets of London toward Buckingham Palace. (Watch: Kate's walk down the aisle)
Their open landau was closely followed by a closed carriage for the queen and her husband, Prince Philip. For a time, the streets more used to black cabs and trundling red buses echoed to the clip-clop of hooves from trotting chargers and antique carriages. Flanked by liveried footmen in gold and red tunics, the newly married couple smiled and waved, offering what some commentators have depicted as a more open and modern visage of the monarchy once dismissed as aloof. On the final stretch of their brief, first journey as man and wife, the couple passed along the broad ceremonial avenue called The Mall leading to the palace, with the national anthem playing, the crowds cheering and, after fears of rain, a sliver of sunlight nudging past the clouds.
The wedding service had begun with a psalm and a hymn, "Guide me, O Thou Great Redeemer." The couple stood side by side before the altar. As she arrived to join him, William whispered to her, and onlookers said he seemed to be saying, "You look beautiful."
The service followed Anglican tradition, with the prince and Miss Middleton both declaring "I will" to the wedding vows pronounced by the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual head of the Anglican denomination. Miss Middleton did not pledge to "obey" Prince William, as was once usual, but instead to "love, comfort, honour and keep" him.
"I pronounce that they be man and wife together," the archbishop said. The service continued with the hymn "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling." Some onlookers noted that while the prince placed a wedding ring on his bride's finger, she did not reciprocate the gesture.
"With this ring I thee wed; with my body I thee honour; and all my worldly goods with thee I share," William said, repeating the words of the archbishop.
After the ceremony the couple were to host a reception at Buckingham Palace. Before the service, in ascending order of royal rank, Miss Middleton's new in-laws-to-be and members her own family had driven to the abbey in a variety of Rolls Royce, Bentley and Jaguar cars, cheered on by crowds standing 10 or 15 deep along the way. Just before the bride reached the abbey, the queen arrived wearing a primrose dress and hat and accompanied by Prince Philip at the same place they were married in 1947 and where she was crowned in 1953.
For the last time as a bachelor, William, the second in line to the throne, left his father's residence, Clarence House, to travel with his younger brother, Prince Harry, his best man, to marry Miss Middleton, the daughter of a millionaire couple who made their money with an Internet business -- a fusion, in British parlance, of a commoner and, potentially, a future king.
Wearing a bright red military uniform as Colonel of the Irish Guards, the prince travelled in a plum-coloured Bentley limousine. Bells pealed and cheering crowds lined the Mall as his procession -- the limousine, a lone motorcycle outrider and a single SUV carrying security personnel -- drove past.
The couple's relationship, which began when they were both students of art history at St. Andrews University in Scotland more than nine years ago, has been broadly welcomed among Britons who have followed the royal family through tortured years of dashed hopes and scandal, much of it centring on the doomed marriage of William's mother, Princess Diana, to his father, Prince Charles.
Charles himself attended the ceremony with his second wife, the former Camilla Parker-Bowles, now the duchess of Cornwall, whom he married in 2005 and who was once criticized by Diana as the "third person" in her marriage.
Earlier on Friday, the queen announced that William would assume three new titles to be shared with Miss Middleton -- the Duke of Cambridge, the Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus. A dukedom is the highest rank in British peerage.
Miss Middleton will be known after her marriage as the Duchess of Cambridge, but she will also have the titles the Countess of Strathearn and Baroness Carrickfergus. According to British protocol, she will not be able to formally call herself Princess Catherine because she was not born a princess.
Newspaper headlines feted the wedding on Friday with words like "storybook" and "fairytale" -- terms that were applied in earlier times to the marriage of Charles and Diana in 1981 at St. Paul's Cathedral, an event that also seized the nation with enthusiasm.
"The transition of Miss Middleton from a young woman from the Home Counties to being our future queen is the stuff of fairy tales," said the conservative Daily Telegraph.
But some struck a note of caution. "These are tough times for millions of British people," The Guardian newspaper said in an editorial. "This is not a day for demented princess worship or for in-your-face state extravagance. Even if it was, the recent past inevitably casts a shadow over the occasion. As far as dream royal weddings are concerned, Britain is a once-bitten-twice-shy country."
Hundreds of thousands of people converged Friday on London's streets, craning for a glimpse of the royal family and the 1,900 other invited guests holding the hottest ticket in town inviting them to the ceremony at the centuries-old abbey. (In Pics: The guest list | Who wore what)
The early arrivals -- queens, kings, dukes and emirs arrived later -- filed into the abbey under the soaring columns supporting its 102-foot-high Gothic vault, treading carefully along a red carpet, many of the women wearing bright, broad-brimmed hats. As the morning progressed, the bride's family and junior members of the royal family travelled to Westminster Abbey.
Inside, the abbey was transformed by four tons of foliage, including eight 20-foot-high English field maple trees. The abbey has been the coronation church since 1066 and 17 monarchs are buried there, according to its Web site. Construction of the present-day building began in 1245 during the reign of Henry III.
Despite falling overnight temperatures, thousands of spectators had been camping out for two days in tents festooned with the Union Jack to secure a good view of the pageantry. Tens of thousands more people gathered to watch the ceremonies on huge television screens in venues like Hyde Park.
The closely scripted event began with the arrival of some members of the congregation at 8:15 a.m., watched by 5,000 police officers and chronicled by an estimated 8,500 journalists and support staff members from around the world.
Hundreds of millions tuned in on television around the world, and dozens of temporary studios, filled with presenters speaking dozens of languages, have been built against the backdrop of a floodlit Buckingham Palace, one of the queen's homes and, for many, the focus of the British monarchy.
With many Britons facing hard times because of government austerity plans, the wedding has been pitched by politicians as an occasion for national celebration and rejuvenation amid the economic gloom. The wedding day has been declared a public holiday and more than 5,000 people have been given official permission to close off roads for street parties. Some have taken the opportunity for unlikely rebels.
Hugo Millington-Drake, 21, a student, walked down Parliament Street in a full tuxedo, with bow tie, and a bowler hat. "If I wasn't invited I thought I would at least dress up," he said, adding that he had been separated from other formally dressed friends. Mr. Millington-Drake said that he did not usually attend royal events, but that "everyone is here and it's an excuse to drink Pimm's at 8 a.m. And it's the fairytale -- the commoner becoming princess. Actually, I hate that word, 'commoner,' but you know what I mean. These two are really in love, unlike Charles and Diana."
The new royal couple have also set a different tone, living together before their marriage at a remote Royal Air Force base on the island of Anglesey, where William, 28, is based as a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot.
Britain's often-intrusive press has granted them a degree of privacy, both in the early days of their relationship at St. Andrews and since then. While their relationship was widely known, it was only in December 2006 that Miss Middleton, now 29, attended William's final parade at Sandhurst, Britain's premier military academy.
In 2007, the couple seemed to drift briefly apart for several months before reuniting.
For some, their relationship has been haunted by comparisons with the travails of Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, a year after her glaringly public divorce from Charles.
Diana had been popular among many Britons. The queen's stiff and formal initial response to her death seemed to divide the nation and even threaten the monarchy.
Indeed, even now, the memory of Diana rarely seems far away. Her brother, Earl Spencer, was among the guests on Friday at Westminster Abbey, where he addressed her funeral service with an emotional eulogy in 1997.
When the royal family announced the wedding plans last November, William gave Miss Middleton the sapphire and diamond ring that his father had given his mother for their engagement, saying it was "my way of making sure my mother didn't miss out on today and the excitement."
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