Royal spectacle: all eyes on William & Kate

Live coverage of the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey throughout the day 7.28am: Adam Gabbatt is on the Mall with the freezing crowds: Thousands of people are lining the Mall, which has been cordoned off on both sides with metal barriers, and almost every single one is bearing a union flag of some sort – OK! branded flags being particularly prevalent. Key points near Horse Guards Parade are already getting congested with revellers, many of whom have been camped out overnight. The area along the Mall is well furnished with portable toilets, some will be pleased to know, but only one small cafe van, which surely will struggle to meet demand. After a cold start to the day it’s warming up quickly, although a little overcast. At the moment crowds are amusing themselves by cheering police motorbikes, which are driving away from Buckingham Palace. Prince William will be driven down here just after 10 – if all goes to plan for the last time as a single man. Adam will be spending the day out and about among the crowds, tweeting and posting video and audio as he meets people along the way. His journey will be mapped out below as he goes . Navigate around the map and timeline to experience the royal wedding with him. _ 7.21am: My colleague Hannah Waldram is here with the weather: With a cloudy start to the day, forecasters predict lunchtime showers for the capital that could put a dampener on the royal wedding kiss – planned for the balcony of Buckingham Palace at 1.25pm. But Tom Morgan, a weather forecaster at the Met Office, said there was no risk of showers before lunchtime. The forecast for London today is a largely cloudy start to the day. Morgan said: “Generally it’s going to be dry and we are going to see a brightening up with some sunny spells. At lunchtime and the early part of the afternoon there’s about a 30% risk of some showers scattered about. If you catch one of those showers it might be quite heavy.” Morgan said the risk of showers would be mainly between 1-3pm for Londoners. The Press Association reports that the royal couple will travel from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace in the open-top 1902 State Landau whatever the weather. The original plan was that they use the covered Glass Coach if it was raining. The afternoon promises a rise in temperatures (up to 19C) and some more sunny spells and dry weather as we head towards the early evening. The weather looks set to be kinder to other parts of the UK – including St Andrews in Fife, where the couple met as undergraduates. The area will host a wedding breakfast party with an expected 1,500 guests is forecast to be bathed in sunshine. 7.16am: Marina Hyde of the Guardian’s Lost in (Royal) Showbiz column has emailed with her first bulletin: Stuff that’s happened on ITV’s troubled breakfast show Daybreak: the programme began at 0600 hours, but we somehow got all the way to 6.16am before sofa guest Eve Pollard gave what may well be today’s first command by a “royal expert” to Kate’s uterus. “We want an Olympic baby,” she declared firmly. I literally can’t believe I’ve got to get through today sober … And re this much quoted “global television audience of 2bn” – is this a bit like when they say the Baftas are going to be seen “by a global television audience of 1bn”, and then afterwards it turns out that one in six people on the planet watching celebs shiver up the Leicester Square red carpet in the rain was a bit optimistic? A few years ago the LA Times touched on this in the context of the far more gigantic Academy Awards, quoting the Oscars executive director Bruce Davis as saying: “There has never been a television event in the history of the world that has had a billion viewers – it’s a handy number to throw around but it’s not true.” 7.02am: Thousands of well-wishers have lined the mile-and-a-half route to Westminster Abbey this morning, Stephen Bates, Sandra Laville and Lee Glendinning report . Yesterday evening, Prince William met the crowds waiting on the Mall, shaking hands and telling delighted members of the public he was focusing on “remembering the lines” for the “big day”. The Press Association news agency has more: Friends Sue Heppell, 59, Susie Record, 67, and Ann Burch, 65, travelled from Newcastle to find a good spot outside Clarence House at midday yesterday. Mrs Record said she had met William last night and he had seemed very relaxed about his impending nuptials. “He asked us whether we were sleeping out,” she said. “He didn’t seem surprised.” The Middleton family spent the evening quietly at the Goring hotel near Buckingham Palace, which was cordoned off with a marquee shielding the entrance so that the bride will be able to slip unobserved into one of Buckingham Palace’s Rolls Royces for her journey to the abbey at precisely 10.51am this morning. Her dress will not be revealed until she arrives at the abbey nine minutes later. The designer Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen appeared to have entered the hotel in disguise yesterday afternoon, suggesting she may have designed the dress. Other designers named as possible candidates are Jasper Conran and Bruce Oldfield . William will wear the red uniform of the Irish Guards of which he is colonel. The police and intelligence services launched an unprecedented security operation in London. Scotland Yard carried out a series of dawn raids, arresting 20 people in five squats across the capital. 7.00am: The rehearsals are over, the bunting is out , and the tasteful memorabilia is on display. And that’s just here at the Guardian, where, as you can imagine, we are gripped with royal wedding fever. Hopefully it’s just a 24-hour thing. The word’s media has arrived, unwelcome ambassadors have been disinvited , protests have been called on and called off , and at last the big day has arrived. And it wouldn’t be a national occasion without a live blog, so welcome to our coverage. We’ll be all over the service, the procession, the dress, the kiss, the fly-past, the parties – and all the rights and wrongs of royalism and republicanism – right here, all day. I’m not on my own. The Guardian has deployed a cast of several in order to bring you the top wedding news: Esther Addley is with the most ardent royalists camping out on the Mall, Adam Gabbatt has travelled down from Manchester with a coachload of revellers and is now tweeting his way around the capital . Hadley Freeman will be on hand from New York to share the full horror of the US media spectacle while Vicky Frost does the same for the UK, Kate Carter will cast her eye over all the outfits and our fashion guru Jess Cartner-Morley will give her verdict on The Dress. Crime correspondent Sandra Laville is at Scotland Yard keeping an eye on the security situation and Steven Morris has the view from Kate Middleton’s home village. We’re on the procession route too: Sam Jones is on Whitehall, while Peter Walker has the best view of the Buck House balcony from his vantage point at the Victoria memorial. Meanwhile, our man in morning dress is Stephen Bates , who has secured his place in the pews and will be reporting from inside Westminster Abbey. Finally, our Lost in (Royal) Showbiz columnist Marina Hyde will be on hand to give us a healthy dose of Guardian scepticism to keep us all in check. As if we could possibly get over-excited about a mere wedding. If even this gently sceptical tone is just too much then click on the top-right button on the Guardian home page: all our royal coverage melts magically away. There’s plenty of proper news for you to get stuck into. For those of you who remain, pull up a velvet cushion and break out the Babycham: here’s how we expect things to develop. Timetable 8am-9.45am: Congregation begins to arrive at Westminster Abbey. 10.10am: Prince William and Prince Harry leave Clarence House for the Abbey. 10.25am: Royals begin to leave Buckingham Palace for the Abbey. 10.50am: Kate Middleton and her father leave Goring Hotel. 11am: Marriage service begins . 12.15pm: Marriage service over, the carriage procession leaves the Abbey for Buckingham Palace. 1.25pm: William and Kate appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with their families. 1.30pm: Fly-past by RAF and Battle of Britain memorial flight. Afternoon to around 3.30pm: Private afternoon reception hosted by the Queen. 7pm onwards: Private evening reception hosted by Prince Charles. The route to and from Westminster Abbey will take in The Mall, Horse Guards Road, Horse Guards Parade, Horse Guards Arch, Whitehall, Parliament Square, and Broad Sanctuary. Here’s a map of the route. The service will be broadcast through speakers along the route, and there are giant screens in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square. There are more details on the royal wedding website here . The full programme and order of service is available online here (with a nice drawing of the route on pages four and five) and here . The service will be conducted by the Dean of Westminster, John Hall, and the couple will be married by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, will give the address. Philippa Middleton, Kate’s sister, will be the maid of honour, while Prince Harry will be his brother’s best man. The bridesmaids and page boys are all young children, and mostly relatives. The music will be performed by two choirs, two fanfare teams and one orchestra: the choir of Westminster Abbey, the choir of Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, the fanfare team from the Central Band of the Royal Air Force, the state trumpeters of the Household Cavalry and the London Chamber Orchestra. More details of the musicians can be found here . Around 1,900 people have been invited, including 1,000 of the couple’s family and friends, as well as members of foreign royal families, politicians, diplomats, foreign leaders “from the Realms”, royal staff, and representatives from the armed forces, William’s charities, the Church of England and other religions. Around 650 people have been invited to the lunch reception hosted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace, and around 300 to the dinner Prince Charles is hosting in the early evening. The first royal wedding of the social networking age has quite properly got not only its own website , but also its own Twitter account , Facebook page , Flickr site and YouTube channel , which will be broadcasting the service live. Watch out if you sign up for that Facebook page; the resulting message “X likes the British monarchy” may come as an unwelcome surprise to some of your friends. There’s a map of the wedding route here , and information for those visiting London today here . Royal wedding Prince William Kate Middleton Monarchy Paul Owen guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 28, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.