Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall’s ‘other’ royal wedding to be a humble affair

Couple decide against lucrative magazine deal for relatively small ceremony to be held at Edinburgh’s Canongate Kirk As a “private family occasion”, even one closing part of Edinburgh and costing taxpayers up to £500,000 in security, Saturday’s royal wedding is likely to reveal only the briefest public glimpses of bride and groom, Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall. Unlike the wedding, beamed across the globe three months ago, international TV anchors are not camping outside Canongate Kirk on the Royal Mile, as the Queen’s eldest granddaughter and 13th in line, marries the England rugby captain. “There doesn’t seem to be any American interest,” said Dickie Arbiter, formerly palace press officer now a royal pundit for Sky News. “Zara’s so far down the pecking order. She’s a Miss, not a princess. And Americans just don’t get rugby!” And unlike another “private family occasion”, the 2008 wedding of Phillips’s brother, Peter, to Autumn Kelly, there will be no pictures of the royals – such as Sophie Wessex, “getting it down” on the dancefloor – appearing in a £500,000 Hello! magazine exclusive deal. At the time some newspapers lambasted the “vulgarity” of it all, while simultaneously drooling over the magazine’s sales-boosting shots of princes William and Harry’s then girlfriends, Kate Middleton and Chelsy Davy, across 20 glossy pages. No such blatant commercialisation this time: though reports that the Queen had stamped a regal foot and forbidden her granddaughter from similarly cashing in seem wide of the mark. Phillips and Tindall made it plain from the moment of their engagement that there would be no magazine deal, one impeccably placed source stressed. “I’m not surprised,” said Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine. “After all that damage, Peter Phillips will forever be known as the chap who sold his wedding to Hello! for half-a-million and upset the rest of the family. “Saturday’s going to be very different. Not sure what we’ll be allowed to see,

Posted by on July 29, 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.