BRITISH ROYAL WEDDINGS-3

His Royal Highness The Prince Charles, eldest son of The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, was born at Buckingham Palace on Sunday, 14 November1948, in the twelfth year of the reign of his grandfather King George VI. When, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1952, he became heir apparent to the throne, Prince Charles automatically became Duke of Cornwall. His creation as Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester - a matter for the Sovereign's pleasure - came when he was nine years old. The Investiture of His Royal Highness as Prince of Wales took place in his twenty-first year, on 1 July1969.

The Prince was educated at Cheam School, a preparatory boarding school in Berkshire, and at Gordonstoun, on the Moray Firth. In 1966 he spent part of the school year in Australia as an exchange student at Timbertop. In October 1967 Prince Charles went up to Cambridge. There he took an active part in undergraduate life, appearing in several college revues, and gaining his University Colours for polo. His Royal Highness graduated BA(Cantab) in History in 1970.

Following family tradition, Prince Charles entered the Royal Navy in 1971. He served in the frigate HMS Jupiter as Communications Officer, in HMS Hermes as a qualified helicopter pilot, and finally took command of the coastal mine-hunter HMS Bronington. After five years in the Service, The Prince left the Royal Navy and in January 1977 he was promoted to the rank of Commander in the Royal Navy and to the rank of Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force. Since then, in addition to his normal round of royal duties and travel abroad, His Royal Highness has pursued a programme of familiarisation with various aspects of public life in Britain.

Diana Frances Spencer was born on 1 July 1961 at Park House on The Queen's estate at Sandringham, the daughter of the then Lord and Lady Althorp. Her father became the eighth Earl Spencer in 1975. A former Captain in the Royal Scots Greys, he was Equerry to the late King George VI from 1950-1952, and to The Queen from 1952-1954. The family home of Althorp, near Northampton, is a great and stately house which dates from 1508 and contains one of the finest art collections in Britain. Lady Diana's mother, whose marriage to the future Earl Spencer was dissolved in 1969, was born the Hon. Frances Roche, the daughter of the fourth Baron Fermoy. Her grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, has been a Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother since 1960.

Lady Diana was educated at West Heath School, near Sevenoaks in Kent, and at a finishing school in Switzerland. She has lived in London since 1978 and has taught at a kindergarten in Pimlico. She shares many interests with Prince Charles, including music and outdoor activities, and they both have the same sense of humour. After her marriage to His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales at St. Paul's Cathedral on 29 July 1981, Lady Diana will be known as Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales. She will be the first Englishwoman to marry an heir to the throne for over three hundred years, when Lady Anne Hyde married the future James II from whom Lady Diana descends. The Spencers also descend from the daughter of the first Duke of Marlborough, who was the ancestress of Sir Winston (Spencer) Churchill. Prince Charles and Lady Diana have a common ancestor in King James I.

Until 1919, when Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Patricia of Connaught, was married in Westminster Abbey, royal weddings were customarily held in a private chapel at one of the royal palaces. Princess Patricia's wedding was not on a grand scale, but she was extremely popular and her wedding, soon after the end of the First World War, had the same tonic-like effect on the nation that attended the marriage of Princess Elizabeth in 1947.

Nowadays, the public at large are able to participate in a royal wedding to an unparalleled degree. Due to highly sophisticated technology the colourful splendour of the pageantry is transmitted by television to many parts of the world, and the wedding ceremony, witnessed by millions of people, becomes the most public of personal occasions. Apart from the pageantry and, in the case of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, the historical significance of the service, it is the same as a wedding that takes place in any local church, attended by the bride and groom's parents and grandparents, their families and friends.

The outstanding feature of all wedding garments has always been the bride's gown, but Queen Victoria's wedding dress, by comparison with her predecessors, was charmingly simple. Often, royal brides went to their weddings richly apparelled in magnificent fabrics (such as cloth of gold or silver tissue embroidered with pearls and diamonds), costly jewellery, and elaborate, bejewelled hair ornaments. The wedding gowns, whatever their fashion, almost invariably had long trains. The bridegroom's wedding day attire vied in splendour with that of his bride, but this trend slowly became more sober and by the mid-nineteenth century it was customary for the royal bridegroom to wear Service uniform.