Prince William and Kate Middleton’s engagement has just been announced and already bookies are refusing to take any more bets on popular dates in July, after a palace source revealed that July 8 is a likely date for the Royal wedding.
By lunchtime yesterday, bookmakers were taking 1,000 bets an hour on the question of the Royal weeding date, with July emerging as an early favourite.
Clarence House has only revealed that the wedding is likely to take place in either spring or summer next year.
However, both June and July are chocca with other Royal birthdays and anniversaries, meaning Wills and Kate will have to pick their day carefully.
Excitingly, Downing Street has not ruled out creating a special Bank Holiday for the Royal Wedding.
A spokeswoman said only: “Those sorts of discussions are yet to be had.”
Please get married on a Monday, Wills and Kate!
Street parties
National celebrations for William and Kate’s wedding are expected to match those for Charles and Diana’s 1981 circus.
Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, is expected to remove much of the red tape which currently stands in the way of closing roads and partying on the street.
Pickles said: “Royal Wedding street parties are a great British tradition. So if folks want to get together to organise a street party to celebrate next year’s wedding, we have made it as easy as possible to do so without endless form filling.”
Is Kate Middleton the new Diana?
Royal wedding souvenirs
Firms have been quick to cash in on the Royal Wedding and numerous ‘collectibles’ are already being designed.
But do people still want Wills and Kate tea-cups and plates? Yes, according to Stephen Church, managing director of The UK Gift Company.co.uk.
“Every time a Royal Wedding comes around there’s an element of scepticism, but just wait and see what happens as the day comes closer. There’ll be street parties and great excitement,” he told Sky News.
“I think we’ll sell easily as many royal wedding gifts as we did for Charles and Diana in the 1980s.”
The engagement ring
Last night William and Kate appeared before photographers in St. James’s Palace and showed off the engagement ring which was previously worn by the prince’s mother, Diana.
William said that the priceless diamond-encrusted sapphire ring was a way of including Diana in the “excitement” of his proposal.
“It was my way of making sure my mother didn’t miss out on today, and the excitement and the fact that we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together,” he said.
The couple revealed how the engagement took place when were staying in an open-air Masai lodge called Il Ngwesiin, from which they took a helicopter to a remote lake on the slopes of Mount Kenya where William proposed 12,000ft above sea level.
Kate described it as “very romantic”.
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Is Kate Middleton the new Diana?
Prince William and Kate Middleton engaged to be married
– Frankie Mullin
