Kate (28 page)

Like the late Princess of Wales, Kate was statuesque and beautiful, with heavily made up eyes, but she seemed far more confident than Diana, who had been just nineteen when she and Charles got engaged. Although she admitted to being anxious, Kate managed to keep her nerves in check, and as she
walked into the photo session, one step behind her fiancé, she appeared poised, almost regal, smiling despite the startling camera flashes.

The fifteen-minute interview was watched by a record 3 billion people across the world that evening. Incredibly, it was the very first time Kate had spoken publicly. She made a point of placing her hands on her lap so that she didn't fidget with her hair and spoke beautifully in a cut-glass accent. Some of her school friends noticed that her clipped tones were rather different from how she spoke when she was a young girl. “She has changed a lot, she's certainly grown into a beauty, and the funny thing is her voice has completely changed. She sounds very posh, and she definitely wasn't that well-spoken when we were at school,” recalled one of her contemporaries from St. Andrew's Prep.

The first topic of discussion was the proposal. “It was very romantic,” said Kate. “There's a true romantic in there.” She admitted to being genuinely stunned when William asked her to marry him. “I thought he might have thought about it, but no, it was a total shock when it came and very exciting.” William revealed that they had been talking about marriage for some time. “We've talked about today for a while . . . for at least a year, if not longer. It was just finding the right time. I had my military career and I really wanted to concentrate on my flying, and I couldn't have done this if I was still doing my training, so I've got that out of the way and Kate's in a good place in terms of work and where she wants to be, and we both just decided now was a really good time.”

He also spoke movingly about why he had chosen his mother's ring. “It's very special to me. As Kate's very special to me now, it was right to put the two together,” he explained.
“It was my way of making sure my mother didn't miss out on today and the excitement and the fact that we are going to spend the rest of our lives together.” They agreed that it was a “real relief” to finally be engaged, although Kate said it had not been an easy secret to keep: “We had quite an awkward situation because I knew that William had asked my father, but I didn't know if my mother knew. So I came back from Scotland, and my mother didn't make it clear to me whether she knew or not, so both of us were there sort of looking at each other.”

William was remarkably candid about why he had waited eight years to propose. “I wanted to give her the chance to see in and back out if she needed to before it all got too much,” he said. “I'm trying to learn from lessons done in the past and I just wanted to give her the chance to settle in and see what happens on the other side.” They talked about their breakup in 2007, and Kate confessed it had been an unhappy time but insisted that she had come through it a stronger person. “You find out things about yourself that maybe you hadn't realized,” she said.

She also spoke of her gratitude to William's father, who she said had welcomed her into the family early on. She described Charles as “very, very welcoming, very friendly.” When Mr. Bradby asked Kate how it felt to be marrying into the most famous family in the world and her feelings about the late Princess of Wales, Kate stumbled for the first time. “Obviously, I would love to have met her,” she said softly. William stepped in. “There's no pressure,” he insisted. “No one is trying to fill my mother's shoes—what she did was fantastic. It's about making your own future and your own destiny, and Kate will do a very good job of that.” They spoke about the
importance of family and how they hoped to start their own in the future. “It's very important to me and I hope we will be able to have a happy family ourselves,” Kate said. “We'll have to start thinking about that,” William added.

With the nation glued to their televisions that evening, Kate paid a quiet visit to Westminster Abbey with Helen Asprey, William's trusted diary aide, who had been designated as one of the wedding planners. As Kate walked up the aisle, her footsteps echoing around the empty pews, she marveled at the scale and beauty of the abbey and the enormity of what lay ahead.

By the end of the month, the Palace announced that the wedding day—which was also to be a national holiday—would take place at Westminster Abbey on Friday, April 29, 2011. It was where William's mother's life had been celebrated at both her funeral and memorial service, and he thought it a fitting tribute to her. Both he and Kate loved the sacrarium, a raised platform at the abbey's high altar, which afforded them an intimate place to exchange their vows. In keeping with tradition, Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was to marry them into the Church of England, of which William would one day be the head. Charles arranged for his good friend, the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, to give the address. The Dean of Westminster, Dr. John Hall, was asked to conduct the service. The twin choirs of Westminster Abbey and Her Majesty's Chapel Royal, together with the London Chamber Orchestra, the trumpeters of the Household Cavalry, and the RAF Fanfare Team were appointed to fill the abbey with music.

While William returned to work, Kate decided to put her photography exhibition on hold so that she could fully focus
on planning her wedding. Unlike other brides, Kate not only had a wedding to organize, she was also being intensively prepped on everything, from how to handle the media to constitutional matters. Sir David Manning, one of the Queen's most senior aides, had been tasked with ensuring she was properly briefed on state and foreign affairs, ceremonial matters, and crucially, the order of hierarchy when she was in the company of senior royals. A former British ambassador to the United States, Sir David taught Kate the protocol on receiving heads of state and foreign crowned heads, before whom she was expected to curtsy. When she attended the Queen's Christmas drinks party at Buckingham Palace that month for the very first time, Kate got the opportunity to put her training to use. She curtsied to Prince Charles and Camilla in the presence of the Queen, and she was also required to curtsy, or bob, to blood royals, including the Duke of York's daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. It might have felt slightly strange because the young women occasionally socialized together, but it was the order of precedence.

Kate was happy to be spending her last Christmas as a single woman with her family; she knew once she was married, she would be expected at Sandringham every year. William was on duty at RAF Valley on Christmas Day, and as usual they were both together in Scotland for the New Year. Kate's twenty-ninth birthday was a typically low-key celebration, and instead of having a party, she and William spent her birthday weekend in North Yorkshire at the wedding of their friends Harry Aubrey-Fletcher and Louise Stourton. Not wanting to upstage the bride, Kate arrived separately from William through a side entrance with her protection officer in tow. She still found being shadowed a strange experience, and although
she got along well with her protection officers, it felt unnatural having to tell someone where she was going and what she was doing every minute of the day. Possibly the strangest thing was having an armed guard with her when she went home to Bucklebury.

Kate divided her time between Anglesey and London, where she had regular meetings at Clarence House. She had taken the advice of some of her girlfriends who had found mood boards useful in the runup to their own weddings. Kate set about archiving cuttings from books and magazines and took the mood boards into the planning meetings. She wanted nature to feature strongly, and when she had the idea to bring maple trees into the abbey, Charles, who was picking up part of the bill together with the Queen and the Middletons, referred her to his florist, Shane Connolly. According to one senior aide, “William and Kate were told that anything they wanted was possible and Charles and the Queen made their full households available to them both.” There was speculation in the press from the engagement day onward about everything to do with the wedding, from who was designing Kate's dress (a secret she was determined to keep until the wedding day) to how she would wear her hair. According to James Pryce, she decided on a demi-chignon in February and had considered flowers in her hair. “One of the ideas was to have lily of valley because it is beautiful, British, and seasonal, but then she decided she wanted to wear a tiara. She was very firm about what she wanted, and ‘romantic' was the key word.”

The Queen had suggested the couple carry out a brief tour of Great Britain ahead of the wedding and courtiers set to work preparing an itinerary to include Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the north of England. Their first walkabout took
place in Anglesey, and on a windy February morning, they launched a new lifeboat at Trearddur Bay, not far from RAF Valley. The next day they flew to St. Andrews University, as William had been asked to be the patron of the six hundredth anniversary appeal. Hundreds of wellwishers lined up to meet the couple, and as they talked to students, they recalled their own happy days in their university town. “It feels like coming home,” said William, while Kate appeared to momentarily forget her etiquette and greeted the crowds with an endearing “Hi!” After visiting the university, they made a fleeting trip to Fife. “I have to try and keep up with him,” Kate joked as she shook hands with some of the crowd. Dressed in an eye-catching scarlet dress and jacket, her outfit by Italian designer Luisa Spagnoli was such a hit that it sold out online within hours, leading fashion writers to predict that Kate was set to be just as great a style icon as Diana.

When the couple visited Northern Ireland at the beginning of March, the “Kate effect,” as it was now referred to in the newspapers, was evident once again after the Burberry trench coat she wore sold out within hours. Kate seemed overwhelmed with the reception she received, and as she gamely flipped a pancake to mark Shrove Tuesday, she felt moved to show her gratitude and addressed those who had waited to see them: “Thank you for giving me such a warm welcome.” The crowds were just as warm in Lancashire, where not even torrential rain could dampen the spirits of the people who queued for hours for a glimpse of the couple. As hundreds of local people gathered behind the police barriers, cameras poised, waving Union Jacks, there was much talk of how slim Kate was in the flesh. It was reported in the press that she had dropped a dress size and had to have her engagement ring tightened. “Are you nervous?”
one wellwisher asked as Kate accepted a bouquet of rain-drenched flowers. “Of course I am!” she responded.

The Palace considered the tour so successful that it was decided William and Kate should visit Canada and the United States after their wedding. This young and glamorous couple appeared to be breathing new life into the monarchy, and a national poll conducted then by the
Sunday Times
found that the majority of the public thought William would make a better king than Charles. Many said the heir should step aside so that William could take the throne upon the Queen's death.

Kate was having weekly update meetings at Clarence House, and by the end of March, most of the key decisions about the ceremony and the wedding reception had been made. Mr. Lowther-Pinkerton was in charge of the plans, but the couple made the final decision on everything. Kate had asked Charles to help her choose the music for the ceremony, and the pair spent hours listening to songs and hymns on Charles's iPod. Camilla treated Kate and Pippa to lunch so that they could discuss the forthcoming nuptials. A senior aide said that the duchess was eager to be a part of the preparations: “Camilla is very fond of Kate, and she wanted the chance to hear all about the plans and offer to help if she could in any way. It was a case of the family helping Kate as much as they could.”

After much deliberation about the guest list, by March, the gilt-edged invitations, which were addressed from the Queen, were sent out. The comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain's office, Sir Andrew Ford, together with the Queen's private secretary, Sir Christopher Geidt, had drawn up a guest list, but William had balked when he saw it. “There was very much a subdued moment when I was handed a list with 777 names on—not one person I knew or Catherine knew,” William told
the British broadcaster Alan Titchmarsh. “I went to her [the Queen] and said, ‘Listen, I've got this list, not one person I know—what do I do?' and she went, ‘Get rid of it. Start from your friends and then we'll add those we need to in due course. It's your day.'”

Unlike Charles's wedding to Lady Diana Spencer, which was a state occasion, William as heir apparent was not obliged to invite the same number of dignitaries because he was not next in line to the throne. However, the heads of the Commonwealth and certain crowned heads had to be invited as a matter of protocol. Traditionally, recent royal weddings have followed a format: the ceremony is followed by a wedding breakfast before the newlyweds leave for a honeymoon at Balmoral, but William and Kate intended to do things differently. They wanted a dinner and party for their closest friends and family on the night of the wedding, so it was decided that canapés would be served at a champagne reception at the Palace for six hundred guests. The Queen agreed to give them Buckingham Palace for their wedding night so that the newlyweds could host a wedding party. “The Queen would have wanted to accommodate their wishes as much as possible,” said Lady Elizabeth Anson. “They had been to lots of their friends' weddings, and they had a clear idea of what they wanted and the Queen understood that.”