Stephen Bates
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 April 2011 20.23 BST
Considering the size of the audience, the two sets of trumpeters, two choirs and several of the most senior clerics in the land, the presence of the entire British royal family, 45 crowned heads from around the world and a guest list stretching to nearly 2,000, it was quite an intimate wedding. And, confounding all the understandable fears, nerves and precautions, it went off without a hitch.
Miss Catherine Middleton of Bucklebury, Berkshire went into Westminster Abbey at 11am and came out an hour and a quarter later, holding the hand of the second in line to the throne as Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge – she will not be known as Princess Catherine. At the moment of their wedding, the Queen bestowed a title on her husband, Prince William of Wales. In fact, there were three titles so that none of her realms felt left out: he also became Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus.
Yet, for all the pomp and circumstance surrounding them, the couple found space to share knowing looks and smiles, suggesting that the natural instincts and affections which Dr John Hall, the abbey's dean, told them at the start of the service had been implanted by God, were already in place. There were giggles between them as he struggled to wriggle the Welsh gold ring on to her finger.
Later, appearing on the balcony at Buckingham Palace to give each other the obligatory kiss to satisfy the watching crowd and the massed ranks of the world's cameras, they gave each other the most perfunctory and chaste of pecks, as if slightly dismissive of the public nature of the ritual.
After a couple of minutes, they did it again in case anyone had missed it. But there was another surprise: William and his bride appearing later in his dad's 40-year-old open-topped Aston Martin, festooned with balloons and a Just Wed number plate, roaring out of the palace and heading down the Mall.
On a grey but bright and muggy day in central London – no sign during the morning of the showers that had threatened to break the month's hot weather – police estimated that up to a million people congregated, half of them in the Mall. In contrast to how police count demonstrations, that may have been an overestimate, but there were certainly many thousands. In the only slight sign of trouble, a small group of protesters gathering in Soho Square to put on masks were pre-emptively stalled without getting near.
Overnight several thousand people had camped outside the abbey, where some had bagged space since early in the week, and along the edge of St James's Park. From early morning, many thousands more poured in, parents carrying picnic bags and rucksacks and children with flags and painted faces, wearing their best party dresses, some of them with cardboard crowns and many others with union flag hats. There were whole families, including grannies and grandads and a high proportion of young people, with many tourists among them.
As they made their way across the bridges, tramping towards Westminster, where the abbey glowed white in the early light, the mood was cheery and police officers, asked to take family photos, obliged. It was, Lord Sacks, the chief rabbi, noted on the BBC, Britain and royalty at its best.
Later the prime minister would gush too: "It was beautiful to see two people who really love each other and who are incredibly happy at an amazing ceremony ... A day when we see 'the new team'. It was incredibly romantic and moving.
"It's a great moment for Britain, a moment when everyone is celebrating and it's being watched round the world where people will see lots of things they love about Britain," David Cameron said.
Before 9am the first guests were arriving at the abbey, walking the red carpet that had been laid outside, through the Great West Door, past the tomb of the Unknown Warrior and up to the altar steps. The nave itself was lined with growing trees, eight maples and two hornbeams, with scented lily of the valley flowers planted at their base. The guests looked like an animated Madame Tussauds: Trevor Brooking and Earl Spencer, Elton John – his hair billowing in the wind like his very own fascinator – waving to the crowd with his partner David Furnish, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and the Beckhams, newly arrived from Los Angeles with David wearing his OBE pinned to his suit. Cheering wafted into the abbey from outside.
Then came the foreign leaders: Australia's republican prime minister Julia Gillard and her partner, New Zealand's John Key and his wife . They were followed by British politicians, the men dragooned into morning suits: Ed Miliband and his fiancee Justine Thornton, Nick Clegg – his wife Miriam González Durántez almost defiantly glamorous – followed by David and Samantha Cameron and a clutch of ministers.
Prince William, in the scarlet tunic of the Irish Guards, followed 45 minutes before the service, accompanied by his brother and best man Prince Harry, in time to greet arriving members of foreign royal families. Then, a fleet of four minibuses followed carrying minor royals from Buckingham Palace, like a charabanc outing.
And then there were the Middletons. A week ago Carole Middleton, flight attendant turned successful businesswoman, could have caught a cab unnoticed in Whitehall. Yesterday she and her son James, who has just started his own cake business, were driven by limousine up the Mall, across Horseguards Parade and past the Houses of Parliament past cheering crowds, to be greeted at the abbey door by a clutch of clergy, including the Archbishop of Canterbury in mitre and cope.
Do mothers still dream that their daughters might grow up to marry a prince and be driven down the Mall in a carriage? If so, Mrs Middleton bore the slightly stunned, unreal expression of one who has woken up to find the dream come true. They were followed by Prince Charles, in naval uniform, and the Duchess of Cornwall and then the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. And then the bridesmaids and pages, the littlest, three-year-old Grace Van Cutsem, yawning from excitement and tiredness - the little girl, led out on to the balcony at the palace, would later cover her ears to shield them from the noise.
Then lastly, precisely on time, Kate Middleton and her father Michael, whose career started as a British Airways cargo dispatcher, slid into a royal Rolls-Royce at their hotel, the dress, subject of so much speculation, still hidden from view: all that could be seen was lace about the sleeves and a veil over the head. The secret of the elegant ivory gown, designed by Sarah Burton, had to wait another nine minutes until the bride stepped out of her limousine at the abbey.
The intention behind the service itself was a demonstration of Britishness: music by British composers – John Rutter and Peter Maxwell Davies and the young Welsh composer Paul Mealor as well as Elgar, Britten and Vaughan Williams – and old, favourite hymns: Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling and Jerusalem.
The service itself, in conformity with the Church of England's 1966 prayerbook, was a mixture of modern and archaic English, during the course of which Middleton and her husband promised to love, comfort, honour and keep each other, forsaking all others and keeping only unto themselves. William also promised to share all his worldly goods with her.
In his address Richard Chartres, the bishop of London and the clergyman closest to the royal family, advised: "The more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves ... In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life." As he spoke of the Holy Spirit quickening within them, filling their lives with light and so leading on to family life, Middleton blushed and smiled.
There are those loyalists who say Princess Diana's spirit would be hovering and certainly her influence was seen most obviously as the couple left the abbey: the new duchess grinning with relief and joy, her husband smiling, but self-consciously blushing with eyes downcast, like his mother in a thousand photographs.
And so to the palace in the 1902 state landau, pulled by white horses. En route the only unforseen incident of the day occurred when a horse ridden by a member of the Household Cavalry escort bolted, throwing its rider as the procession passed Downing Street.
Only pride was dented, the Ministry of Defence said later: the horse "had had a bit of a moment".
Then those discreet kisses on the balcony. And that was thought likely to be that: retirement for the Queen's reception to partake of crab salad and duck terrine, smoked salmon on beetroot blini, asparagus spears and quails' eggs, langoustines and pork belly, Pol Roger champagne and wedding cake and to listen to Charles joke about passing his bald spot on to his son. After that spread, the 85-year-old monarch and her 89-year-old husband were understandably going to retreat to the country, leaving the youngsters to a dinner and disco. This is a prince less hidebound than his father and more informal.
For most couples the drive down the Mall would be the start of their drive into the sunset, but not this pair, not any longer: they turned sharp left 200 yards down the road into Clarence House to rest and recuperate before the evening.
Last night they were staying at Buckingham Palace. Today they set off on a fortnight's honeymoon – destination a closely guarded secret but one that is almost certain to be discovered in time for the Sunday papers: a new life for the Duke of Cambridge and a transformed one for his duchess. She will never walk unnoticed down a street ever again.
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The guardian 真係好幽默，bold 左的是很好的比喻~~
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