Royal wedding - what surprise is in store?

Last night on BBC television, the BBC's royal correspondent (Nicholas Witchell I think) said we should all be ready for a surprise.  Maybe he used the word wow factor, I'm not sure. So he knows something. What? Two possibilities present themselves. One is that Kate Middleton will upstage Sweden’s Princess Victoria by parading up the aisle with William, and will thus abolish at a stroke the repugnant tradition of the bride being given away.  That’s unlikely.  To be fair this is a much bigger ask in Britain than it was in Sweden where the giving away tradition is not actually embedded.  I discussed this Swedish controversy last year.

Wedding scene from Ang Lee’s Sense and
Sensibility. Emma Thompson as Elinor

The other possibility is she won't wear white. Ang Lee’s 1995 film of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, which ends with a double wedding, has both sisters in their colourful finery; and I found out from Bath’s fashion museum the other week that the first white wedding dress in their collection is 1828.  The commentary said it’s unknown exactly when and why white became obligatory but it was thought to be around that time, that is to say roughly 15 years after Austen wrote the novel.

So having assured everyone that you’ve got to be joking if you think I'm going to be watching the royal wedding,  I might just have a peep at the entrance ceremony to see if I'm right about either of these outlandish suggestions.

As a final comment, I notice people in Ireland tend to refer to the forthcoming event as “the royal wedding”. Even RTÉ presenters and correspondents do so. Which some find annoying, and rightly so in my opinion, as the correct phrase would be “the British royal wedding”.

Subsequent note , Friday, April 29 : No surprise. I was misled. Ah well silly me I allowed my imagination to run away with me. Just the same old royal wedding stuff.