She wears Diana's tiara. Her brother bakes the cake. So what would Kate and Wills' Big Day really be like?

Royal delight: How we imagine the happy couple might look


He argued that since he was not yet heir to the throne - as his father and grandmother were when they married - the expenditure of a state occasion should be avoided. And since Prime Minister David Cameron was urging spending restraint on all sides, this was seen as a sensible and prudent step.

So, in the place of the massed bands of the Brigade of Guards, the Eton College Concert Band kept the crowds entertained after William asked his old school for help. Horse-drawn carriages were replaced by decorated troop carriers from Prince Harry's regiment.

Defence cuts meant that there were just three helicopters in the fly-past, as opposed to the customary fleet of aircraft, and the platoons of soldiers that traditionally line the royal route gave way to Mr Cameron's newly-formed army of community service volunteers.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne expressed his pleasure: 'Do you know how much these affairs normally cost?' he asked. 'By being prudent, we have saved the nation a colossal amount of money.'

And he was quick to point out that the wedding breakfast - kedgeree, accompanied by English sparkling wine as opposed to champagne - chimed with the new age of austerity that the Conservative government had warned would last for many years.

The suggestion had been a masterstroke by Kate's mother Carole, a former air stewardess, whose party planning company had advised on the reception, branching out from children's entertainment for the first time. It was unfortunate one courtier was heard to mutter that the decision to decorate Windsor Castle's Great Hall with balloons bearing a photograph of the happy couple was 'vulgar, vulgar, vulgar'.

Carole also decided to enlist her son James's online baking company to create a three-tier wedding cake, although traditionalists were privately appalled that a sponge and jam filling had been used instead of the traditional Dundee cake fruit mix. Despite the low-key nature of the occasion, the crowds outside welcomed the diversion of a royal wedding.

After all, since Mr Cameron had expressed determination to cut back on public sector spending in his emergency Budget just 50 days after the May election, the country had been mired in industrial strife.



A nation waits: Prince William and Kate Middleton pictured during a skiing holiday in the French Alps last month


And when the bride appeared after the service, her veil thrown back to reveal a diamond- studded tiara that had belonged to William's mother Diana, Britain's desperate economic plight was momentarily forgotten.

It is true there had been some backstage bickering as to whether the service should be conducted by just the Archbishop of Canterbury alone. Prince Charles's late intervention, in which he suggested the involvement of the Dalai Lama and Dr Farhan Ahmad Nizami of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, was rejected by William - another indication of his growing independence and the widening breach between father and son.

Although the congregation in St George's Chapel contained many of the faces familiar to royal watchers - Princess Michael of Kent being a notable example in a tiara borrowed from jeweller Theo Fennell which she had modelled in Hello! magazine - the prize for the most extraordinary outfit had to go to the Duchess of York in what she described as her 'Lady Gaga hat'.

Tiggy Pettifer (previously Legge-Bourke), the former royal nanny, was noticeable because of her loud tweed cloak. There was also the growing rumour that she had sprung out of a cake dressed as a nurse at William's stag night, held in the London wine bar Julie's the previous weekend.

But the guest whose appearance gave rise to most comments was Jessica Craig, William's unmarried former girlfriend. She had flown in from her parents' conservation ranch in Kenya and, tanned from the winter sun, looked stunning in a simple white dress topped off with a small leather bush hat.

'She's the one he should have married,' commented one royal watcher.

Fergie's fun-loving daughters Beatrice and Eugenie had been passed over as bridesmaids in favour of Kate's better-behaved relations, such as the Earl of Wessex's seven-year old daughter Louise. It was Kate's younger sister Pippa who clambered over the other guests to catch the bouquet.

The one Middleton relative who could not, unfortunately, make the wedding was Kate's uncle Gary Goldsmith, who had been arrested only a week earlier in Ibiza on suspicion of supplying cocaine to vice girls he had entertained in his £5 million playboy mansion in Ibiza.

Centrepiece of the reception - where the eagle-eyed would have spotted the well-upholstered figure of the Duchess of Cornwall, cigarette and gin and tonic in hand, deep in fascinated conversation with her former husband Andrew Parker Bowles - was undoubtedly Samantha Cameron, clutching her new baby Victoria.

Born just a few weeks earlier, the child was named in honour of her husband's triumph at the election, where he won with a 64-seat majority.

As for Gordon Brown, who had hardly been seen outside his native Scotland since his election defeat, he had turned down his invitation to the wedding in favour of an afternoon spent with his former henchman Charlie Whelan on the terraces at Raith Rovers in his native Fife.

The Fife Free Press informed its readership that the former Prime Minister would watch the royal wedding on television after the game. 'I have set my video recorder,' Brown was reported as saying, 'and will watch the event with people from my Kirkcaldy constituency.'

The mood of celebration was not universal. The Scottish National Party was furious when the University of St Andrews, where Kate and William met, declared a holiday in honour of the royal wedding.

And the BBC refused to broadcast the wedding live on the grounds that it was not an occasion of sufficient constitutional importance. Instead, ITV stepped in and picked up 20 million viewers, while Channel 4 put on a virtual reality show called Not The Royal Wedding, presented by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand.

The royal couple left the reception in horse-drawn carriage. In the absence of the royal yacht, they had accepted an invitation from Richard Branson to honeymoon on Necker Island, his holiday home in the Virgin Islands William thought this was entirely appropriate.

Necker, after all, had been a favourite playground of his mother Princess Diana. The fact that this was after her split from Charles did not seem to worry the young Prince at all.


source: dailymail