Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (67 page)

On September 15, 2008, Clarence House announced that William would devote himself to flying, rather than to royal duties, fulfilling his dream of becoming a search-and-rescue pilot. Initially, he had wished to be deployed overseas when his unit was called up, but this was deemed too risky, not to mention the fact that he represented the future of the English monarchy and its best hope. However, the prince didn’t want his military training to be wasted and had discovered a way to serve his country that both fulfilled him and kept him out of combat areas. Nonetheless, even the palace was stunned by the announcement. So, too, was Catherine. By joining the RAF at age twenty-six, William could postpone his royal duties for up to five years, because the air force would occupy him full-time. What would that bode for a royal wedding? How long could Waity Katie wait?

According to biographer Christopher Andersen, after securing the blessing of the queen and Prince Charles, William finally proposed during a candlelit dinner in a cozy fishing cabin at Balmoral in January 2009. The royal family whipped out their calendars, hatching secret plans to announce both the royal engagement and a wedding date. The year 2012 was already crowded, with the queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Summer Olympics, and 2013 was deemed too far away by William. The groom would be spending the better part of 2010 earning his RAF wings, so that was eliminated as well—leaving 2011 as the best option. As Prince Philip would turn ninety on June 10, 2011, “What a lovely birthday present for your grandfather,” the queen told William.

Andersen’s contention about this proposal date, coming
approximately twenty months before William’s formal proposal in Kenya (which evidently took Kate by surprise), seems confusing. Did William reassure Kate that he intended to marry her in January 2009, and the royal family penciled in a wedding date—another step toward the altar—but the prince didn’t actually pop the question on bended knee with a ring in hand for many months? Why? Was he waiting for the right moment to surprise Kate so the proposal would feel romantic and spontaneous and all about just the two of them, rather than like a massive troop maneuver?

Meanwhile, Kate continued to be an avid student of her royal beau, determined to understand, if not fully share, his passions, the better to ensure a more seamless transition from plebian to princess. Only a completely devoted girlfriend would sit apart from the champagne drinkers during her sweetheart’s polo matches, closely observing the action instead of socializing, and explaining to a guest, “I’ve got to pay attention to every second. I’ll be discussing the game in minute detail later on.” Asked why she didn’t play polo herself, Kate replied, “I’m allergic to horses.”

A member of the Beaufort Polo Club observed, “You certainly get the feeling that she works very hard at making Prince William happy. To the rest of us it might seem a little desperate, but then consider what’s at stake.”

Title, position, wealth—and love—were at stake, as well as all the energy and passion invested in a romance that had endured nearly a decade of ups, downs, and growing pains, and all in the public eye.

According to Christopher Andersen, somewhat contradicting his own anecdote about the events of January 2009 at Balmoral, in September 2010, William told his father that the time was finally right to pop the question. The Prince of Wales replied, “Well, you’ve certainly practiced long enough.” William secured the queen’s blessing as well, later remarking that she was “as happy and excited” as he’d ever seen her, adding, with tongue firmly in cheek, except possibly when “one of her horses is racing at Ascot.”

Whatever may have happened between them at Balmoral in January of 2009, William formally proposed to Kate in Kenya. They had gone to visit Lewa Downs, the Craigs’ game preserve. One morning the prince borrowed a helicopter and whisked Kate up to a lake nestled
into the slope of Mount Kenya, about 12,500 feet above sea level—the same spot where he and Jecca Craig had plighted their troth when he was eighteen.

William knelt and offered Catherine his mother’s eighteen-carat sapphire engagement ring. Caught off guard, she burst into tears. “It was very romantic. There is a true romantic in there,” she later told the media. Of the ring, it was “my way of making sure my mother didn’t miss out on today,” William said.

On November 16, 2010, William and Kate, both twenty-eight years old, held a press conference and announced their engagement. The couple then sat down with ITV’s Tom Bradby and gave their first public interview. When asked whether they were nervous about getting married and everything that now lay before them, William admitted to being “like little ducks, very calm on the surface, but little feet going like crazy under the water.”

It was the first time that most people heard Catherine Elizabeth Middleton speak. Her voice was soft and breathy, with the same high-pitched upper-class diction that marks the vocal quality of the Windsor women. Regarding their ten-week split in 2007, Kate confessed, “I, at the time, wasn’t very happy about it, but actually it made me a stronger person. You find out things about yourself that maybe you hadn’t realized.” After William released a dramatic “Whew!” Kate added that the separation ended up being “all about finding a bit of space and finding ourselves, about growing up—and it all worked out for the better.”

William concurred, adding that their relationship now was “incredibly easy, because we took the time.”

And Kate admitted that the prospect of filling the shoes of the previous Princess of Wales is a daunting one, and fitting into the royal family “nerve-wracking. I don’t know the ropes…but I’m willing to learn quickly and work hard. I really hope I can make a difference.”

And one day the modest girl from Bucklebury will call Buckingham Palace home. She and William were married in 2011 on St. Catherine’s Day—April 29—in Westminster Abbey. They had approximately nineteen hundred invited guests, who represented the vast spectrum of society on both a state and a personal level, encompassing members of
Britain’s royal family, foreign dignitaries and heads of state, representatives from charities with which William has had a long relationship, and locals from the Middletons’ hometown in Berkshire, including the butcher, the publican, and the convenience store proprietors. According to tradition, the Archbishop of Canterbury officiated over the vows with the participation of the Very Reverend Dr. John Hall, Dean of Westminster.

Catherine, who did her own makeup, was radiant in an ivory gown with a nine-foot train designed by Sarah Burton, of the house of Alexander McQueen. The long lace sleeves and corseted bodice with its nipped-in waist were reminiscent of the wedding gown worn by the late Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly, although in a nod to the bride’s personal sense of style, Kate’s dress sported a plunging neckline. The dress had been successfully kept a secret from everyone, even William, who was seen to murmur, “You look beautiful” to his bride when she met him at the altar.

The most-speculated-about garment in three decades was created by Sarah Burton, the lead designer for the atelier of the late English couturier Alexander McQueen. According to the palace’s official statement, “Miss Middleton wished for her dress to combine tradition and modernity” and “worked closely with Sarah Burton in formulating the design of her dress.”

The seamstresses from the Royal School of Needlework, based at Hampton Court Palace, ranging in age from nineteen to seventy, did not know whose garment they were creating. They had been told they were building a dress for a period movie and were not even informed of the identity of the designer. In order to keep the fabric pristine, the women had to wash their hands every thirty minutes and switch to new needles every three hours in order to ensure the appropriate level of sharpness for such meticulous work.

The dress was constructed from ivory and white satin gazar, intended to resemble an opening flower, with white satin gazar arches and pleats. In keeping with Alexander McQueen’s looking-back-yet-fashion-forward signature approach to couture, the gown’s ivory satin bodice was narrowed at the waist and padded at the hips. It echoed both the Victorian tradition of corsetry as well as a very modern interpretation of sixteenth-century court fashion. The train
measured two meters, seventy centimeters—nearly seven feet long—but was modest in comparison to Princess Diana’s dramatic twenty-five-foot train. The back of Kate’s wedding gown was finished with fifty-eight gazar-and-organza-covered buttons fastened in the traditional way, with Rouleau loops. The underskirt was constructed of silk tulle trimmed with Cluny lace.

Every bit of the lace appliqué for the bodice and skirt was handmade and then appliquéd onto the gown using the Carrickmacross lace-making technique, which originated in Ireland in the 1820s. The individual flowers incorporated emblems from across the United Kingdom: the English rose, Scottish thistle, Welsh daffodil, and Irish shamrock. They were hand-cut from lace, then painstakingly stitched onto ivory silk tulle to create a one-of-a-kind design, although bridal couturiers everywhere sought to emulate the gown’s silhouette as soon as Kate stepped out of the Rolls-Royce.

The vee-necked bodice and A-line skirt, as well as the trim on the underskirt of Kate’s gown, utilized hand-cut English lace as well as French Chantilly lace. Sarah Burton’s team vigilantly ensured that all of the floral lace embellishment, coming as it did from multiple sources, was the same shade of white.

There had also been much speculation as to whether Kate would wear a tiara, or, because it was assumed that she would enter the Abbey as a commoner, whether she might wear a wreath of flowers in her hair (even though it was Queen Victoria who set the fashion for orange blossoms). Catherine opted for the former. She wore a modest tiara with a delicate scroll-shaped design loaned to her by the queen. According to the palace’s official press release, Catherine’s

…veil [was] made of layers of soft ivory silk tulle with a trim of hand embroidered flowers…held in place by a Cartier “halo” tiara, lent to Miss Middleton by The Queen. The “halo” tiara was made by Cartier in 1936 and was purchased by The Duke of York (later King George VI) for his Duchess (later Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother) three weeks before he succeeded his brother as King. The tiara was presented to Princess Elizabeth (now The Queen) by her mother on the occasion of her 18th birthday.

Yet Kate did not enter Westminster Abbey as a commoner after all. On the morning of the wedding, Queen Elizabeth made Prince William and Catherine the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. William’s full title until the death of his father is Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn, and Baron Carrickfergus. His wife cannot officially be called Princess Catherine until she becomes Princess of Wales, owing to the passing of Prince Charles or the death of Queen Elizabeth and Charles’s immediate ascension to the throne.

William, who wore the scarlet tunic of a colonel of the Irish Guards, displayed some of his late mother’s charm and wicked sense of humor. Even at the altar, he put his visibly nervous bride at ease (after all, two billion people were watching them on television from around the world). “This was supposed to be a small family affair,” he whispered to Kate just before the wedding ceremony began, eliciting a grin from her, even as she gripped her father Michael’s hand.

During the recitation of the vows, William and Catherine maintained eye contact, the love between them abundantly evident. Meanwhile, Prince Harry, William’s best man, or “supporter,” as the English call it, looked straight ahead, or cast his eyes downward, pondering the solemnity of the occasion. He would coo, “You’re next,” to longtime girlfriend Chelsy Davy during the evening bash, but the couple has since split yet again.

As Catherine recited her vows in a soft, audibly nervous soprano, the look in William’s eyes seemed to provide his silent reassurance that not only was he there for her in that moment and that everything was going to be all right, but that he would
always
be there for her all the days of their lives. There was visible relief all around once the vows had been spoken and the couple was seated to listen to the address given by the Right Reverend and Right Honourable Dr. Richard Chartres, Lord Bishop of London and Dean of Her Majesty’s Chapels Royal. At one point during the sermon, William appeared to give Catherine a little wink.

Mindful of the current economic climate, the royal wedding was toned down from the lavish pageantry of William’s parents’ nuptials, but there were a number of modern twists. Catherine, who had mined her closet for the modestly priced dresses she wore in her engagement photos and at her first press conference with William, arrived
at the Abbey in a car—albeit a Rolls-Royce Phantom IV—rather than in a coach. The couple had asked all but their immediate relations to give charitable donations in lieu of gifts. Fulfilling William’s desire to hold the first-ever “people’s wedding,” in addition to inviting the requisite heads of state, the bridal couple peppered their guest list with charity workers. On the night before the ceremony, William and Prince Harry went out to greet the fans who had been camping on the street outside Clarence House, securing a prime location to view the royal procession. These hard-core royal watchers, many of whom were sporting silly hats and faces painted with the Union Jack, were over the moon with delight.

The traditional kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after the wedding ceremony turned out to be two smooches—and they meant it. “Oh, wow,” Kate breathed when the newlyweds first stepped out onto the balcony and saw a million well-wishers gathered below, stretching from the Victoria monument all the way down the Mall.

And in an extra treat for the public, the newly minted Duke and Duchess of Cambridge tootled from the palace down the Mall to Clarence House for a few hours of R & R between the queen’s three p.m. reception and Prince Charles’s evening bash, in the navy blue Aston Martin Volante convertible that the Prince of Wales had given to his oldest son as a twenty-first birthday present. William was behind the wheel, with his bride smiling and waving beside him. He had changed into a navy military tunic, but Catherine was still wearing her gown. Tin cans had been tied to the bumper, and the license plate read,
JU5T WED
.