A smiling Prince William and Kate Middleton were declared man and wife at London’s Westminster Abbey, in front of a congregation of around 1,900 and a worldwide television audience estimated at as many as 2 billion.
Wearing an ivory and white satin dress designed by Sarah Burton–a closely guarded secret until minutes before the service began–Kate accepted a wedding ring of Welsh gold, given to William by the Queen soon after the couple were engaged. The bride also wore a diamond-studded halo tiara loaned by the Queen, with her gently curled hair down at the back.
In a marriage ceremony led by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Kate promised William that she would “love him, comfort him, honor him, and keep him,” and he offered the same pledge. Like William’s mother Princess Diana at her own 1981 wedding to Prince Charles, Kate struck a modern note by omitting the traditional vow to “obey” her husband.
William, who chose not to wear a ring, donned a bright red tunic, with a crimson and gold sash and gold sword slings, from the Irish National Guards, a British Army regiment of which he is an honorary colonel. The choice was made in part to honor three members of the Guards who were killed in action in Afghanistan.
The bride’s ring was created by Wartski, a Palace spokesperson said, a family jeweler that also created the wedding bands for Prince Charles’s 2005 marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles, now the Duchess of Cornwall.
Kate, 29, the daughter of creators of a successful party-planning business, becomes the first commoner in line to be queen in modern times. She’ll now be known officially as Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge, Buckingham Palace said in a statement this morning–though the public will know her as Princess Catherine. William becomes the Duke of Cambridge.
The bride’s three-and-half minute procession through the abbey was accompanied by a choir singing the soaring English choral “I Was Glad,” composed in 1902 by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry. In a tribute to Princess Diana, the congregation began the service by singing “Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer,” a Welsh hymn sung at her 1997 funeral. It also sang “Jerusalem,” the popular English hymn based on a poem by William Blake.
Yahoo Writer: Zachary Roth
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