Good morning from London, where the New York Times Royal Wedding Team is on full alert.
• At noon (7 a.m. Eastern), Prince Harry, 33, the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, will marry Meghan Markle, 36, an American actress, at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, which is (you might have guessed) in Windsor, an ancient town west of London, near Heathrow Airport.
• The prewedding period has had more than the usual complement of unforeseen mishaps, but all appears to be well now. Ms. Markle will drive to the church with her mother, Doria Ragland, and walk down the aisle with her future father-in-law, Prince Charles.
• The day’s first bit of news arrived early: The queen announced shortly after 8 a.m. that Harry will be titled Duke of Sussex, Earl of Dumbarton and Baron Kilkeel. Ms. Markle will be known as Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Sussex.
• In the scheme of things, this particular marriage is not really that important. Harry is only sixth in line to the throne. But Ms. Markle is a highly unusual royal bride: She’s American, three years older than Harry, has a high-profile career and is biracial.
• Wake up to what matters. Get our Morning Briefing to your inbox.
Here we go.
All of this excitement might tire you out, especially if you’re in the United States, where it’s still the middle of the night. So pace yourself. Make a big pot of coffee.
More than 2,000 members of the public who have been invited to watch the wedding party enter and leave St. George’s Chapel are congregating on the grounds of Windsor Castle.
As they have many hours of congregating to look forward to, they’ve been advised to bring their own lunch. Guests have started to enter the chapel.
Ms. Winfrey is there. So is Mr. Elba. Serena Williams has been spotted, as have the Clooneys and the Beckhams, and Elton John is expected to be in Windsor.
The couple have ruled out inviting politicians. That avoids the potential unpleasantness that might have ensued had they invited Barack and Michelle Obama, who are their friends, but not President Trump, who is not the most popular person in Britain.
At 11:20 a.m. in Windsor, members of the royal family start arriving.
At 11:45 a.m., Harry gets to the church with Prince William, his best man.
At 11:55 a.m. Queen Elizabeth arrives.
At 11:59 a.m. Meghan arrives in a car with her mother, leaves the car and enters the church. Everyone gets to see her dress, decide whether or not they like it, and speculate how much it cost. Prince Charles will escort her to the altar.
The service will last an hour, after which Meghan and Harry will take a little jaunt in a carriage through the streets of Windsor, where they and the crowds can wave at each other.
Oprah is there. So are her sunglasses.
One of the great excitements about any wedding, of course, is the moment you learn who has been invited and who has not. Meghan and Harry have kept their list secret, but now dozens of these mysterious figures are starting to enter St. George’s Chapel.
Who are they? We don’t know! We’re trying to figure it out, and so are the television commentators.
But wait. This is exciting. Here is none other than Oprah Winfrey, in a snug pink dress, a pair of very cool sunglasses and a massive broad-brimmed hat spectacularly festooned with flowers. If anyone qualifies as American royalty, it is surely Oprah, with her ability to transcend race and background, and her great gift for openness and emotional candor.
Her confessional approach, with its emphasis on recovery and redemption, is nearly the polar opposite of the traditional British impulse to keep your feelings to yourself and carry on without complaint. In its quiet way, we’re witnessing a titanic clash of national mentalities.
Oprah has kept her sunglasses on, even though she is inside, which is pretty cool. She’s chatting to some people — I am sure we will eventually find out who they are — and looking movie-starry and also rather regal. (Hello, British royals! We’ll see you and raise you one.)
As for the rest of them, they are a lot of very good-looking English people wearing morning suits (men); and pretty flowing dresses and more conservative dress-and-jacket combos (women). The hats are a sight to behold. We will discuss those later.
Even the British television Royal Expert TV Commentators and Airtime Fillers are struggling to figure out who all these people are. Someone mentions the pop star James Blunt. And if TV commentators are correct, Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas — two of Harry’s ex-girlfriends — have entered the chapel together! That is an interesting development.
Middletons, Beckhams and Clooneys, oh my!
Now we’re playing Spot the Guest as more people throng into the chapel and mill around inside. Here are Kate Middleton’s parents, Carole and Michael, who have always done such a good job of wearing appropriate outfits, smiling tastefully and saying nothing.
Here is Charles Spencer, the Earl of Althorp, Diana’s brother, perhaps known best for his active love life and his impassioned attack on the British media after his sister’s death.
It’s turning into Celebrity Central here. George and Amal Clooney are making their stately, Hollywood-y entrance (She’s in yellow with some kind of interesting train).
David and Victoria Beckham, a.k.a. Posh and Becks, have come in and are gracing some people in the crowd with their conversation.
Other people are here, too. We’ll keep you posted.
You’ve got questions. We’ve got answers.
You probably have a few questions about the royal wedding, having never married into royalty yourself.
Who is going? Why? Do the bride and groom get to bring their corgis (do they have any corgis)? Why is the royal family so fixated on corgis, anyway? Will the guests be subjected to that perverse and baffling British tradition, the serving of wedding fruitcake?
Which of many possible military uniforms will Harry wear to the ceremony, and how did he decide? What’s the deal with all these hats that are actually called fascinators and are not, strictly speaking, hats at all?
We’ve answered over 100 questions to help you understand these and many more of the day’s pressing issues. (It’s a pretty exhaustive list and contains even things you didn’t realize you wanted to know.)
And, for anyone who remembers the electrifying moment that Pippa Middleton sashayed into the church in a slinkily form-fitting bridesmaid’s dress at her sister Kate’s marriage to Prince William in 2011, there is another matter.
Who will be this year’s Pippa? And what aspect of her (or his) outfit and physique will seize the public imagination this time? Is it possible to improve on the nickname instantly awarded to Pippa: “Her Royal Hotness”?
‘I never thought it would happen.’
We’ve got reporters all over the place this morning — in Windsor, in London, in Essex and at viewing parties in the United States — so we’ll be getting updates throughout the day.
Stephen Castle, who usually roams the halls of Parliament for us, rode the 6:50 a.m. train to Windsor from London this morning, and his car was a face-painted global house party.
Different people had different reasons for coming.
Denise Crawford, who was raised in Jamaica, traveled from her home in Brooklyn to attend a wedding she considered a historic event.
“One of the children of slaves is marrying a royal whose forerunners sanctioned slavery,” she said. “The lion is lying down with the lamb.”
Alexa Koppenberg had come from Germany because she didn’t trust her web browser. It crashed when she watched the 2011 wedding of William and Kate.
“I think it’s great that she’s half African-American,” she said of Meghan Markle. “I never thought it would happen, as Harry always dated blondes before.”
And Roberto Benedicenti had come from Turin, Italy, but it was more about the party than the event.
“He’s not particularly interested in the royal family,” said his friend Domenico Lospinoso, who was painting Mr. Benedicenti’s face in the colors of the Union Jack. “He’s here for the event.”
With a little help, a prince grows into the role.
As for Harry, Meghan seems to have brought him happiness and a sense of maturity and calmness.
As the younger of Prince Charles’s two sons, freed from the burden of being a future king, Harry seemed to charm and party his way through his youth.
He dated a string of (mostly blond, mostly aristocratic) young women, always looking as if he were psyched to stay up later and celebrate longer than anyone else.
He made some missteps. As a teenager, Harry once wore a Nazi costume to a costume party. In 2012, he was photographed partying, and possibly playing strip billiards, with a young woman and her friends at a hotel in Las Vegas.
But being in the army — he served twice in Afghanistan — gave him a sense of purpose, discipline and camaraderie.
Now he is the patron of many charities, particularly ones helping injured and disabled military veterans. In 2014, he started Invictus Games, a Paralympics-style athletic contest for injured former service members.
He was only 12 when his mother, Diana, the Princess of Wales, died. It’s hard to forget the haunting sight of him and William, wearing their grown-up suits, walking behind their mother’s funeral cortege.
Harry, who has spoken about how bereft he felt and how he finally sought counseling to deal with his grief, has said that he thinks Diana would have loved Meghan.
“They’d be thick as thieves, without question,” he said after his engagement was announced. Of Diana, he added, “And she would be over the moon, jumping up and down, so excited for me.”
Welcome to Windsor. Please behave.
Even if you happen to be in England on Saturday, don’t make the mistake of thinking you can just hop on a train and head out to Windsor at the last minute.
First of all, you might not get a seat. And when you do arrive in Windsor, it’s going to be extremely crowded.
You will have to contend with the keen royal-watchers who, having arrived perhaps days earlier, have already snagged all the good spots along the royal route.
That’s in addition to the thousands of police officers, some on horses, with their sniffer dogs, their metal fencing, their vehicle recognition technology, their closed-circuit TV cameras, their helicopters and their marine patrols of the river.
Don’t think that you or your drone can fly over Windsor, either; the police have designated it an exclusion zone for low-flying traffic on Saturday.
Perhaps 100,000 people will crowd into the little town today. No one is saying how much the security operation will cost, but the current (unconfirmed) estimate is that it will come to as much as 30 million pounds.
That’s about $40 million, with the bill to be paid by British taxpayers.
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