Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Royal wedding was a celebration fit for The Beatles

PRINCE Harry attracts a following of fans similar to that which greeted the Beatles and his extraordinary wedding was an intensely prepared extension of that.

PRINCE Harry’s wedding was extraordinary, the culmination of intense preparation in a town which had been witnessing mounting excitement and enthusiasm for weeks. I have known Windsor well since childhood — 54 years — and I have never seen such a maelstrom of happy people gathering to celebrate a royal event or any other event for that matter.

Prince Harry attracts a following of fans similar to that which greeted the Beatles in the 1960s. His naughty, wayward past merely succeeded in making him more popular — girls in their hundreds pressing against barriers to see him on public engagements. Combine this with the knowledge that he had a rotten childhood and adolescence when he should have had a special time, and the fact that he had walked off with a highly popular television star, with a glamorous and unusual background, and there was every reason why this marriage should be the cause of considerable excitement.

MORE: Fergie is back in royal blue

MORE: Meghan’s besties save the day

MORE: Why Meghan Markle wears the pants

NEXT: Where to from here for Meghan and Harry

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have attracted a huge following. Picture: Mega

THE CEREMONY

Services at St George’s Chapel tend to follow a traditional pattern. The College of St George has its ways and has had them since 1348. It has its statutes, and its customs. I can remember when a Knight of the Garter died in the 1980s that they forbade his grandson from playing a violin solo.

Times have changed. This service included a gospel choir from Brixton singing Stand by Me, a spirited sermon, replete with much gesticulation, on the subject of love, from a coloured evangelical Bishop from Chicago, and a solo cellist playing to the Nave, who was the first black boy ever to have won the Young Musician of the Year competition. The congregation might have been more savvy and realised that puzzled expressions would be picked up on television cameras as indeed they were. Some of them were clearly quite surprised. I was fairly certain that the inspiration for this came more from the bride than the groom, which is not to say that he did not hugely welcome it.

And what did it represent? Diversity — times moving on, previously ignored elements of society finally being recognised.

THE PARTY: Celebs turn on glamour at evening bash

THE DRESS: All you need to know about Meghan’s wedding dress

MORE: The royal wedding guest list revealed

MORE: Meghan and Harry’s wedding songs revealed

MORE: Meghan’s dad lashes out at relatives

The couple during the ceremony. Picture: BBC

NEW ROLES

A theme of this union, discussed at great length over many months, has been in what way Meghan Markle will change the monarchy. After all, she has been a global ambassador for charities, she is a feminist, and she is the first royal bride to have addressed the United Nations. Prince Harry is never going to be king. He will increasingly find himself going down in the line of succession. Therefore his primary role is to support the monarch, but when not thus required, he can follow his own plans. This is what Prince Philip and Princess Anne have both done to great effect.

I see an exciting role developing for the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex (a difficult title for anyone with ill-fitting teeth) and it would seem that they will concentrate on the Commonwealth. Both are very much at home in those countries. This has already been suggested and Prince Harry was lately appointed a Commonwealth Youth Ambassador. Both bride and groom are deeply committed, and there was a nice touch that her Givenchy-designed train contained the symbols of the 53 countries of the Commonwealth — as the Queen’s Coronation dress had contained the rather fewer member countries in 1953.

How The Sun celebrated the nuptials. Picture: The Sun on Sunday UK

CELEBRITY TOUCH

There were many favourite moments in the service — exciting things to look out for. The wedding brought in Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, and stars from Suits, the seven series Netflix legal drama that made Meghan Markle famous. It was hard to recognise Gabriel Macht (Harvey Specter) — he looked completely different — but I spotted Sarah Rafferty, transformed from Donna into the most chic of wedding guests, and Rick Hoffman, looking more friendly than his cat-adoring part as semi-bad-guy, Louis Litt.

The Middletons were out in force, and familiar celebrities such as Sir Elton John and the Beckhams.

ROYAL FAMILY

It was wonderful to see Prince Philip (nearly 97) striding into the chapel with the Queen, having completely overcome his recent hip operation, rising for the hymns as if nothing had happened.

They came in and went out through the Galilee Porch, thus avoiding potential shenanigans on the Great West Steps, which in fact involved only one chaste kiss for the cameras.

It was a touching gesture that the Prince of Wales gave Meghan away. What you need on these occasions is a steady hand — you must hardly notice that he is there. In fact you only notice if something goes wrong. Prince Charles led Camilla Parker Bowles to the altar here in 2005, and he had stepped in for Lord Brabourne (now Mountbatten) when he was not well enough to give his daughter, Alexandra, away in 2016. But it was more than that — it gave out a hugely important message of welcome from the groom’s father to a girl who had endured the most terrible week of worry about her father, his succumbing to paparazzi, his state of nerves and health and finally to his absence from the chapel. He capped this by offering the bride’s mother his hand on the way to sign the register.

Prince Charles and Doria Ragland, mother of the bride, depart after the wedding ceremony of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Picture: AP

MEGHAN’S MOTHER

There were stars other than Hollywood stars. Ms Doria Ragland, in Oscar de la Renta, looked the epitome of gentle dignity. We had only ever seen grainy photographs of her in the background before. I thought she was wonderful. The pages and bridesmaids were all cute. There is something very beguiling about Prince George, while Princess Charlotte is a natural waver. What a vision of loveliness was the scene as the bride arrived and mounted the west steps.

One thing that needs to be said. It appeared that the bride did not curtsy to the Queen before

leaving the Quire with Prince Harry. This is often one of the most graceful and memorable moments in a royal wedding service. I am assured that she did, but the BBC cameras failed to capture the moment.

WINDSOR CONNECTION

Saturday’s wedding not only brought the town to a standstill with 100,000 people or maybe many more, pouring in from all parts of the world, but also had the effect that the roads of the carriage procession were re-tarmacked for the occasion. Bunting adorned so many streets, cardboard cut-outs of Harry and Meghan were perched inside shops, and all the inevitable souvenirs were on sale ranging from the supreme good taste of those sold by the Royal Collection within the castle to the traditionally awful mass produced items that are a feature of these events, sold in tourist outlets in the town. Many slept nights in the streets or beside the Long Walk, and in the early morning, more happy streams of wellwishers arrived, many adorned with union jacks and the flags of other nations. For days on end camera crews jostled each other and anyone hungry to express their views would find ready takers.

In 1952, on the death of King George VI, the Queen and Prince Philip found themselves without a country home. They opened some rooms at the castle, loved it there, and are now the longest surviving residents of the castle, using it for weekends when in London, and at other seasons of the year, notably the Easter court, the week of the Royal Windsor Horse Show, for Garter Day and Ascot week. One of the reasons Prince Harry chose St George’s Chapel was that it was easier for his grandparents to make the short journey down the hill for the ceremony — rather than to have to go to London. Prince Harry had known the chapel since childhood, was baptised there and used to come to Easter Day services with his parents. The chapel is imposing and yet intimate, nestling in the very heart of Windsor Castle.

HARRY’S OUTFIT

Before the great day, there had been speculation as to what he would wear and even the suggestion that he might have to lose the ginger beard he has sported since September 2015. It is against military regulations to wear one — only neatly trimmed moustaches are permitted. Prince Harry boasts ‘a crimson forest’ on his jaw. He might have appeared as the newly appointed Captain-General of the Royal Marines, a prestigious appointment, in which case a beard would have been fine. (The Prince took over from the Duke of Edinburgh in 2017). As it turned out, he and best man, Prince William, were matched in frock coat guards uniforms, with stars, but no ribands (sashes) — and only medal ribbons — an unusual choice, but with some symmetry.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge. Picture: Mega

DIFFERENT TIMES

Prince Harry’s wedding was a long way off from 1967 when the Queen’s first cousin, the Earl of Harewood, was forced to marry his second wife in Canaan, Connecticut, and then banned from court for seven years for having brought the Royal Family into disrepute by siring a child while still married to his first wife and then being divorced. As it happens, that second wife gave Lord Harewood half a century of happiness, and in his memoirs her name, Patricia, was ‘repeated at every opportunity like a recurring Wagnerian love motif.’ She was Patricia Tuckwell from Melbourne, Australia, a violinist in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a model, known as Bambi Shmith. She was buried at Harewood House, in the presence of loving children and stepchildren the day before the wedding.

It was a marriage that started unconventionally, effectively in disgrace, but on Friday the Queen and many members of the Royal Family were represented at her funeral bringing closure to a strange episode in the life of the Royal Family.

If Harry and Meghan are as happy as the Harewoods, they have glorious lives ahead of them.

Royal historian Hugo Vickers at Windsor. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

BIOGRAPHY

Hugo Vickers is a well-known royal historian and commentator with extensive links to the royal family.

He has written numerous biographies including on the Queen Mother, King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, and on the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

He has contributed to several volumes of the official guide to the royal family, and is a frequent contributor to newspapers and television coverage of the royal family.

Vickers also has close links with St George’s Chapel, dating back to 1964 when he began as a schoolboy guide taking tourists through the chapel, and has been a lay steward there for 48 years.

He has attended funerals for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (the former King Edward and Wallis Simpson), Princess Margaret, and officiated at the 80th birthday services for the Queen and Prince Philip, and the 90th birthday service for Prince Philip.