Royal wedding live updates: Minute by minute from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's big day

Prince Harry will marry his 36-year-old American fiancée, actress Meghan Markle, Saturday, with the world watching.

The highly-anticipated royal wedding could become the most viewed event in history, with an estimated 3 billion people expected to watch.

Since Harry and Meghan are getting married within the smaller confines of Windsor Castle (instead of Westminster Abbey in central London), the couple sought to arrange their wedding so that as many people as possible could share the experience in person.

The couple have invited 2,640 people to watch them and their guests arrive at and depart from St. George’s Chapel, including 1,200 people nominated by authorities in nine of the United Kingdom’s regions, as well as charity workers, local school children, and employees of the queen. Six hundred guests will attend the ceremony inside the Chapel.

American viewers will have to get up early to catch the action. Guests will begin arriving to Windsor Castle at 5:30 a.m. ET. The palace hasn't released an official guest list, but A-listers like Serena Williams, Sir Elton John, and at least some of the Spice Girls are expected to attend.

The wedding ceremony begins at St. George’s Chapel at 7 a.m. ET and will last an hour. After the wedding, the newly married couple will board a royal carriage outside St. George's Chapel and proceed via Castle Hill along the High Street and through Windsor Town, returning to the castle along the famous Long Walk.

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Queen Elizabeth II will host a luncheon reception at St. George's Hall in the castle State Apartments, following the carriage ride. Later, Prince Charles will host a private sit-down dinner for 200 at Frogmore House, the 17th-century manor on the castle estate best known as a former royal family home and the site of the royal mausoleum where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are buried.

Both receptions are for friends and family only and won’t be viewable to the public.

USA TODAY's free live coverage begins at 5 a.m. ET. Watch in the player above, or on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.

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Here's the news breakdown from Windsor:

6 a.m. London time/1 a.m. EST: The first train from central London to Windsor left at 5 a.m. local time. It was packed full for the 45-minute ride.

Several hundred tourists, some with small children in tow wiping the sleep out their eyes, were in an excited, expectant mood for Harry and Meghan's big day.

About halfway to Windsor, a cry rang out from a voice in one of the carriages.

“Are we excited!?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” a group of women from Florida shouted back, before erupting into giddy laughter.

James Turner, a 33-year-old from southern England who was seated near USA TODAY, asked: “Do Americans always get this worked up about weddings?”

He said he too was on his way to Windsor, but if not for his girlfriend’s insistence he would not have made the effort to get up so early to avoid the crowds. More than 100,000 people are expected in Windsor on Saturday.

By 6 a.m. tens of thousands were already on the streets cheering, waving flags and ready to party in Harry-and-Meghan royal memorabilia from earrings to scarves.

Earlier Saturday, Carol Ann Duffy, Britain’s poet laureate, published an ode to commemorate the royal wedding. It read:

“It should be private, the long walk on bereavement’s hard stones; and when people wave, their hands should not be mobile phones, nor their faces lenses; so your heart dressed in its uniform.

On. Then one blessed step and the long walk ended where love had always been aimed, her arrows of sweet flowers gifting the air among bells — yes, they all looked —and saying your name.”

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard and Jane Onyanga-Omara in Windsor, England

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