❉ Royal Wedding Church ❉

On 23 November 2010, Clarence House announced the date for the wedding as 29 April 2011 (Feast Day of Saint Catherine of Siena) and the venue as Westminster Abbey,a Royal Peculiar founded in AD 960. Although the abbey has been the traditional location for coronations since 1066, it has only recently been the church of choice for royal weddings; prior to 1918, most royal weddings took place in the royal chapels such as the Chapel Royal at St James's Palace and St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.The abbey, which has a usual seating capacity of 2000, has been the venue for recent royal weddings, including those of Elizabeth II (then Princess Elizabeth) to Prince Philip (1947), Princess Margaret to Anthony Armstrong-Jones (1960), Princess Anne to Mark Phillips (1973), and Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson (1986).
It was also announced that the costs of the wedding itself will be met by the Royal Family and the Middletons themselves, while the costs of security and transport will be covered by the British treasury.The couple have also asked that donations be made to charities in place of traditional wedding gifts; to that end, they established The Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton Charitable Gift Fund, which focuses on assisting charities such as the New Zealand Christchurch Earthquake Appeal, the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary, the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and the Zoological Society of London.The most prominent accoutrement inside the Abbey for the ceremony was roughly a dozen 20-foot tall field maple trees arranged on either side of the main aisle.


here were 3,500 people in the congregation at St Paul's Cathedral.It was held at St Paul's rather than Westminster Abbey because St Paul's offered more seating and permits a longer procession through the streets of London. The service was a traditional Church of England wedding service, presided over by the Most Reverend Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Very Reverend Alan Webster, the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. Another 750 million people watched the ceremony worldwide, , and this figure rose to a billion when the radio audience is added in.Two million spectators lined the route of Diana's procession from Clarence House, with 4,000 police and 2,200 military officers to manage the crowds.