PLANNING A ROYAL WEDDING 4: THE BEST MAN AND BRIDESMAIDS
Jessica Hart and Anne McAllister

There are so many big decisions to be made about a wedding: there’s the where and the when and the what sort of wedding it will be, but deciding who will be most closely involved in the bridal party is also crucial.

So, hands up those who thought that Prince Harry would ask his brother, Prince William, to be his best man at his wedding …  Think again! It appears that at British royal weddings, the guy responsible for holding the rings and calming the groom’s nerves is called a supporter rather than a best man (who knew?)  Still, Harry and William are known to be very close – and Harry did his bit at William’s wedding to Kate Middleton in 2011 – so it’s a good bet that Harry will have his brother at his side after all on 19 May.

Fortunately, Prince Jonas is constrained by no such protocol for his marriage to Hope Kennard in the Royal Wedding Invitations series.  He asks his old pal, Jack Masterson to be his best man. As it turns out, Jack has even more star power than the Prince himself: Jack is a rock star whose sex appeal, charm and killer looks sweep women everywhere off their feet … all except Celina, the one woman who got away.

Celina now works for Prince Jonas’s grandmother, the autocratic Serene Dowager Princess, and she is horrified when she hears that Jack will be at Jonas’s wedding. But no one can refuse an invitation to a royal wedding, and in the close confines of Westonbury Court, where the royal party are staying before the wedding, Celina is going to find it hard to avoid the best man …

Traditionally, most of the bridesmaids at a British royal wedding are children, although Kate Middleton had her sister, Pippa, to support her when she married Prince William in 2011.  The identity of Meghan Markle’s bridesmaids is still a secret, but I think little Princess Charlotte is probably a shoe-in for a bridesmaid, don’t you? Meghan will doubtless have been told about the differences between American and British weddings. Royal or not,

bridesmaids follow the bride up the aisle in the UK, rather than precede her as they do in North America, so Meghan may well need an older friend to keep all those little bridesmaids and pageboys in order behind her!

Hope Kennard hasn’t had any hesitation in choosing bridesmaids for her wedding to Prince Jonas.  Jonas’s niece, Princess Katja, will be adorable and her own niece, Holly, enchanting, while the young princes will doubtless make dutiful pageboys – unlike Hope’s nephew, Ben, who flat out refused to dress up (so like his father).

But the two people she really wants with her on her special day are her closest friends, Ally and Flora, who have both worked so hard to make Hope’s wedding everything she wants. They’ll make sure she has the perfect ‘hen do’ (bridal shower for those of you in North America), help her into her dress, steady her nerves and generally be there on the day. And most importantly, be happy for her.  The one thing they won’t be doing is catching the bouquet: they may not be marrying princes, but they both have their own happy-after-ever to plan.

The Prince’s Bride, Sophie Weston
The Baronet’s Wedding Engagement, Jessica Hart (available for FREE via BookBub for a limited time)
The Bridesmaid’s Royal Bodyguard, Liz Fielding
The Best Man’s Bride, Anne McAllister

We had such fun writing the series and thinking about everything that’s involved in a royal wedding that it’s even more interesting now to compare Hope and Jonas’s wedding with a real one.  We wish Harry and Meghan a wonderful day, and – of course – a long and happy marriage with their own happy-ever-after on 19 May.

Sophie, Jessica, Liz and Anne

Photos with permission from Bigstock, DepositPhotos or authors’ own

Years ago someone told Anne McAllister that the recipe for happiness was a good man, a big old house, a bunch of kids and dogs, and a job you loved that allows you to read. And write. She totally agrees.

Now, one good man, one big old house (since traded for a slightly smaller house. Look, no attic!) a bunch of kids (and even more grandkids) and dogs (and one bionic cat) and seventy books, she’s still reading. And writing. And happier than ever.

Over thirty plus years Anne has written long and short contemporary romances, single titles and series, novellas and a time-travel for Harlequin Mills & Boon and for Tule Publishing. She’s had two RITA winning books and nine more RITA finalists as well as awards from Romantic Times and Midwest Fiction Writers. One of the joys of writing is that sometimes, when she can’t go back in person, she can go back in her mind and her heart and her books.

PLANNING A ROYAL WEDDING 3: BEHIND THE SCENES
Jessica Hart and Liz Fielding

When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle marry at Windsor Castle on 19 May, we’ll all be eager to see the fairy-tale elements of a royal wedding: the majestic setting of Windsor Castle, the gathering of royal guests, the cheering crowds lining the street, the horse-drawn carriage taking the bride and groom through Windsor and then back to the Castle along the iconic Long Walk to a reception in St George’s Hall.

We won’t see how much work and planning goes on behind the scenes to ensure that the wedding and reception goes off without a hitch. Anyone who has planned a wedding knows how much thought has to go into every tiny detail; imagine that you are a royal bride and need to think in addition about where the television cameras will go, security, involving the public, planning a processional route …

If she’s sensible, Meghan Markle will have passed many of these decisions onto the experienced members of the royal household who are old hands at running royal events with the meticulous precision for which the British monarchy is famous.  The horses and carriage that will take Meghan and Prince Harry on a route through the town of Windsor will come from the Royal Mews, where staff will be up very early indeed that morning to exercise the horses and make sure that they are looking their immaculate best.  No doubt the carriage will be given a final polish too.

Inside the castle, the royal chef will have been planning the menu for the reception ever since the wedding was announced. He and his team of chefs work in the huge medieval kitchen at Windsor Castle, but the canapes will be served by liveried footmen from what is known as ‘G’ (or General) Branch of the royal household.  In the last few days and hours before the wedding, members of ‘H’ (Household) branch will be making sure that St George’s Hall looks immaculate, with every piece of silver-gilt or wood polished to a mirror shine, while the craftsmen of ‘C’ branch will have removed every last scratch or dent. Windsor Castle is not a museum: it is a working castle, used for a variety of events, and there are inevitable spills and chips and wear-and-tear as people sit on the chairs, walk on the carpets, drink from the glasses and eat off the exquisite porcelain.   

Like Meghan Markle, Hope passes all the behind the scenes arrangements onto her close friend, Ally Parker. Ally is super efficient and having worked for celebrity magazines herself, understands exactly what Hope needs to do.

Because Prince Harry is unlikely to be King, his wedding can be a more private affair than his elder brother’s.  Nevertheless, he and Meghan Markle have invited 2,600 members of the public into the grounds of Windsor Castle to share in the atmosphere of their wedding day. Ally suggests a similar scheme (and honestly, Liz thought of this long before they did!).  Hope and Jonas may have chosen an intimate country wedding, but the little village of Combe St Philip is about to be inundated with press and paparazzi.

Instead of St George’s Chapel, they are marrying in the village church and the reception will be in a marquee in the grounds of Hope’s childhood home, so numbers are limited.  It is Ally’s idea to throw a separate party for the villagers and to involve them as far as possible in the celebrations, and she sets it all in motion: booking musicians, getting the WI to make cupcake posies for the tables, setting up a huge screen so that everyone can watch the ceremony and even organising a carousel and bouncy castle to keep the children amused.

Ally’s doing a great job pulling together the details of the wedding, but the head of security for the royal family of San Michele, Count Fredrik Jenssen is suspicious of her background. He’s going to keep a close eye on Ally Parker, he decides. A very close eye.

Photos from Bigstock or authors’ own

Read Ally’s story now in The Bridesmaid’s Royal Bodyguard!

Liz Fielding was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain. She has more than seventy books in print and has been translated into more languages than she can remember (she is very big in Japan!)  She has won a number of awards, including two RITAs in the US and the RoNA Rose in the UK.

PLANNING A ROYAL WEDDING 2:  THE CATERING
Jessica Hart

So, there you are, having found your prince, and you’ve decided when and where to get married.  But even trickier decisions lie ahead.  What about the reception?  Where will that be? What will you serve your guests and who will sit where?  Pity poor royal brides for whom the seating plan involves an extraordinarily complicated protocol dictating that a princess must be seated above a duchess, a duke above a lord and so on.

After their wedding and a carriage procession through Windsor, Prince Harry and his bride will join their guests for a reception in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle.  This spectacular hall is used on occasion for state banquets, and up to 160 guests can be seated around the table, but a reception with canapés and champagne will avoid the headache of a seating plan altogether.

After the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in April 2011, the Queen hosted a reception for 650 guests at Buckingham Palace. Over 10,000 canapes were prepared for that occasion by the royal chef and his team, who will also cater Prince Harry’s wedding in the Great Kitchen at Windsor Castle.  The kitchen dates back to the fourteenth century and is one of the oldest working kitchens in the world – although fortunately its equipment is definitely twenty-first century.

Royal events are run with a meticulous attention to detail, and the canapés are likely to make a mouth-watering display: at William and Kate’s wedding the canapés included miniature Cornish pasties, mouthfuls of bubble and squeak with confit of lamb and tiny smoked haddock fishcakes.

That menu provided the inspiration for chef Flora Deare, bridesmaid to Hope Kennard at her wedding to Prince Jonas. Hope opts for a simple country wedding – or as simple as a royal wedding can be – and Flora has promised to do the catering.  Although she has vowed to give her friend exactly the wedding she wants, Flora can’t help hoping to inject a little style into the food too.  At a rather awkward dinner with Ally, Max and the super cool Count Fredrik, Flora trials a selection of canapés for the wedding: “Smoked salmon on a beetroot blini, miniature Yorkshire puddings with rare roast beef and a horseradish mousse, and those are walnut sables,” she tells the others, although she’s frustrated by Max, Hope’s brother, who would, as she says, be perfectly happy to serve the royal party “a bag of crisps and some dips”.

Harry and Meghan’s guests in St George’s Hall will be served by liveried footmen, but Hope and Jonas celebrate their wedding in a marquee in the grounds of Hasebury Hall, the ancient manor house where Hope grew up and where Max now lives.  Rather smaller than Windsor Castle, Hasebury Hall has plenty of history of its own, and a large kitchen that is just what Flora needs to plan the royal wedding menu while keeping her cake-making business going on the side.

She and Max come to an agreement: she will use the kitchen in the run up to Hope’s wedding, and as Max’s cooking is limited to opening a can, he’ll hardly know that she’s there.  But somehow it doesn’t turn out like that …

You can read Flora and Max’s story in The Baronet’s Wedding Engagement, free this month on Bookbub!

* Photos from Bigstock or authors’ own

Jessica Hart is the author of more than 60 romances. She also writes historical novels under her real name, Pamela Hartshorne, and non-fiction, including most recently – and coincidentally – a history of Windsor Castle.

Find out more about Jessica at her website www.jessicahart.co.uk or keep in touch on Twitter @JessicaHartXX.

When life imitates fiction …  Jessica Hart had written over 50 romances before she penned a royal story in 2010, and Prince William promptly announced his engagement to Kate Middleton.  Another ten books later, Jessica joined forces with Sophie Weston, Liz Fielding and Anne McAllister to plan the Royal Wedding Invitation series of four books set around (you guessed it) a royal wedding. At which point Prince Harry obligingly asked Meghan Markle to marry him and they decided to get married at Windsor Castle. By a happy coincidence, Jessica has just finished writing a history of the castle with her other writing hat on, too.

Sophie, Liz, Anne and Jessica had great fun together plotting the wedding of commoner Hope Kennard to Prince Jonas, and they’ve been following Harry and Meghan’s wedding plans with interest. So how does the real royal wedding compare to their fictional one?

PLANNING A ROYAL WEDDING 1: THE VENUE
Jessica Hart and Sophie Weston

Decisions, decisions … That first momentous decision to get married is promptly followed by all the other decisions you need to make about the wedding itself. Where are you going to get married? Who will you invite? What about best man and bridesmaids?  Oh, and then there’s the reception, the menu, the flowers …

Every bride wrestles with decisions like these when she’s marrying her prince.  But what if the love your life really is a prince?  That can change everything, not least how you plan your perfect wedding.

Of course, if you marry into the British royal family, as Meghan Markle is doing on 19 May 2018, your options are limited: barefoot ceremonies on some tropical island or a dash to a Las Vegas chapel are unlikely to go well with your future in-laws.

Meghan and Prince Harry have wisely opted to be married in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, as has Princess Eugenie, who is marrying her fiancé there later this year. You can see why they chose it. Nearly a thousand years old, Windsor Castle not only reeks of history and tradition, but has long been a favourite residence of the royal family. It’s where the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh spend their private weekends, a home as well as a spectacular backdrop for state occasions.

St George’s Chapel itself is one of the glories of Gothic architecture, but between you and me, it isn’t ideal as a wedding venue.  The wedding itself will take place in the amazing Quire with its carved medieval stalls, but which is hidden from the view of guests sitting in the nave. Deciding who gets to sit in the Quire to watch the ceremony is likely to be a major headache.

In Sophie Weston’s The Prince’s Bride – the first book in the Royal Wedding Invitations series – Hope Kennard is, like Meghan Markle, a commoner marrying a prince.  Prince Jonas has persuaded her – not without some difficulty – to marry him, but Hope has definite ideas about the wedding and is determined to push back against palace protocol. She isn’t big on protocol.

Hope wants to marry Prince Jonas in her home village of Combe St Philip. Instead of the grandeur of the San Michele castle and cathedral, Hope opts for the charm of a little country church, close to her childhood home, Hasebury Hall. So close, in fact, that on her wedding day Hope can walk to the church with her brother, Max, and walk back, a princess, with her new husband.

Harry and Meghan’s guests will also be able to walk to the reception on 19 May.  St George’s Chapel lies within the precincts of Windsor Castle, so they will just need to walk up past the Round Tower and into the Upper Ward, where the state and private apartments are ranged around the Quadrangle.

Harry and Meghan themselves will be taking the long route to the Upper Ward.  A horse-drawn carriage driven by liveried coachmen from the Royal Mews will take them through the town and back along the iconic Long Walk to join their guests at a reception in St George’s Hall.  Hope and Jonas will be back at the manor sharing that first glass of champagne long before Harry and Meghan get to their reception!

Jonas and Hope’s decision to marry in Combe St Philip rather than with pomp and ceremony in San Michele embroils their friends and relatives in complications and entanglements galore – follow their stories in The Baronet’s Wedding Engagement by Jessica Hart, The Bridesmaid’s Royal Bodyguard by Liz Fielding and The Best Man’s Bride by Anne McAllister, all available now!

In Hope’s position, what kind of wedding would you choose? Would you go for the pomp and pageantry of a royal wedding, or hold out for a more intimate ceremony like Hope does?

The Prince’s Bride, Sophie Weston
The Baronet’s Wedding Engagement, Jessica Hart (available for FREE via BookBub for a limited time)
The Bridesmaid’s Royal Bodyguard, Liz Fielding
The Best Man’s Bride, Anne McAllister

* Photos from Bigstock or authors’ own

Jessica Hart is the author of more than 60 romances. She also writes historical novels under her real name, Pamela Hartshorne, and non-fiction, including most recently – and coincidentally – a history of Windsor Castle.

Find out more about Jessica at her website www.jessicahart.co.uk or keep in touch on Twitter @JessicaHartXX.

Sophie Weston started reading at four and wrote her first book shortly after. She even drew the pictures. She has published 48 romantic novels mainly as Sophie Weston for Harlequin Mills & Boon, with whom she sold more than 11 million copies in 27 languages and over 100 countries – they made an interesting calling card when she traveled widely for the day job. She also writes women’s fiction and has published To Marry a Prince as Sophie Page with Random House, and Red Hot Lover independently. She blogs regularly at LibertaBooks.com and lives in London, England. That fascinates her so much that she occasionally whips unsuspecting readers and authors on a walk round Georgette Heyer’s Regency Mayfair.