The royals who were present included the Queen, Prince Philip, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry, the Duke of York with his daughters Princess Beatrice and Eugenie, the Earl and Countess of Wessex and their daughter Princess Louise, and Princess Royal, Mr Phillips’ mother. The full list of attendees as reported by The Telegraph is below;

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There is an intriguing backdrop to today’s royal wedding of the Queen’s grandson Peter Phillips to Canadian PA Autumn Kelly at Windsor Castle.

For after Hello! magazine secured a £500,000 deal with the happy couple, courtiers are nervous about just what role the publication will have at the nuptials.

Normally, for splashing out such a vast sum, the glossy would expect to secure photographs of all the principal figures — in this case, Princess Anne, Prince Philip and the Queen. Should this occur, royal complaints about privacy will begin to sound rather hollow.

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More than 350 guests, including the queen, are expected to attend the wedding at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle and the reception that will follow at the royal estate.

Mingling with the well-heeled and aristocratic wedding guests will be Kelly’s family from Ontario, New Brunswick and the West Island neighbourhood where she grew up.

Her father, Brian Kelly, will be walking her down the aisle. The wedding is the social event of the season not just in England but in Pointe Claire, too.

In the West Island suburbs, where everyone seems to know Autumn Kelly or one of her friends or family members or someone who knows one of her friends or family members, the uninvited are doing the calculations to determine if they are one or six degrees of separation from being seated next to the queen, Prince Philip, Princess Anne – insert the name of your favourite royal…

But as for bona fide details about the wedding – who will be wearing what or sitting where, or what the maid of honour plans to say to her best friend before she formally joins the royal family – that’s another matter.

“I’ve known her forever,” is all Aubie would offer as she walked to her car at the end of the school day one afternoon last week. “I really can’t talk about it right now,” she said. “Maybe later.”

It was the same story when Kitty Kelly answered the door of the family’s home, a two-storey cottage with an above-ground swimming pool in the back yard and a hockey net in the driveway.

“I’ve been asked not to (comment),” she said when asked what she would be wearing and whom she would be sitting next to at the wedding.

Read entire article at The Gazette

minute tweaks are being made to the marquee on the lawns at Frogmore House, and the Chablis Premier Cru Fourchaume 2006 is on ice.

Every little detail is being attended to, but then ambitious Autumn Kelly was never going to leave anything to chance when she walked down the aisle with the Queen’s favourite grandson, Peter Phillips.

It is a determination that has taken this charming, working-class girl from a suburban backwater of Canada to the heart of the British Royal Family and proved that nowadays, class, breeding and lack of a title (Kate Middleton, take note) are no barrier to joining the Windsor clan.

Seasoned observers have pointed out that, unlike other royal girlfriends – from the then Sophie Rhys-Jones right up to Kate Middleton and Chelsy Davy – Autumn has, until this week, enjoyed a seamless introduction to royal life.

So, can anything cast even the smallest shadow over next Saturday’s long-awaited nuptials?

Read entire article at Daily Mail…

Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips and his fiancee have been paid £500,000 (nearly USD$1M) by a celebrity magazine for an exclusive interview and photoshoot ahead of their wedding.

Phillips and Canadian-born Autumn Kelly — who didn’t know she was dating a prince until six weeks into their relationship — will appear in a 20-page spread in Hello! magazine when it hits the shelves this weekend.

The move has caused friction in royal circles as Phillips — who holds no regal title but is still 11th in line to the throne — has previously claimed to be a private person and avoided the spotlight that falls on his sister Zara and his cousins.

“I honestly can’t believe that they would ever countenance anything quite so vulgar,” one Buckingham Palace source told the conservative British Daily Telegraph broadsheet amid reports Hello! would be locked out of the wedding ceremony itself.

But Phillips was true to form with Kelly: she didn’t realise she was dating a member of the British royal family until she saw footage of Phillips in a documentary about Prince William.

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