Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding is the culmination of a 10-year courtship which began as friends and blossomed into love — and a day that some sceptics thought might never come.
Although many believe their experience equips them well for married life, William’s decision to wait so long raised eyebrows and earned his girlfriend the tabloid nickname of “Waity Katy”.
“They’ve been practising long enough,” remarked William’s father, Prince Charles, when they announced their engagement in November.
But after a very public split in 2007, years of intense media scrutiny and the upheaval of William’s military career, the couple will finally tie the knot at Westminster Abbey on April 29.
Kate admitted that at her first meeting with the second-in-line to the throne in September 2001, when they both arrived to study at St Andrews university in Scotland, she “went bright red” and quickly excused herself.
William, however, said in a joint TV interview to mark their engagement that he always knew “there was something very special about her”.
“We went through a few stumbling blocks as every relationship does, but we picked ourselves up and carried on,” the 28-year-old said, adding: “It’s just really easy being with each other, it’s really fun.”
The interview was a stark contrast with the one done by Charles and Diana on their engagement in 1981. When Charles was asked if he loved his fiancee, he replied awkwardly: “Whatever in love means.”
Lack of cooking skills
Kate teased William about his lack of cooking skills, and he ribbed her about reports that she had a poster of him on her bedroom wall as a teenager. “He wishes! No, I had the Levi’s guy on my wall,” she replied with a smile.
The poster story sparked suggestions that Kate went to university with the aim of capturing the prince, while critics point to her low-key career as proof that she has little ambition to have a career of her own.
But Robert Jobson, a veteran royal reporter and author of William and Kate: The Love Story, says this portrayal is unfair and insists the 29-year-old is an important steadying influence on the prince.
“I think she is somebody he totally trusts,” he said. “It must be a real relief that he’s found his partner, who will not only share his private side of his life but his public life too.”
Kate made her mark early on, Jobson said, when William was unhappy with his university course — like hers, history of art — and almost quit. Kate persuaded him to stay but to switch to studying geography.
In turn, William is very protective of Kate. He saw how his mother struggled with royal life and said he waited to propose to give his girlfriend a chance to “back out if she needed, before it all got too much”.
In their first year, the couple lived in university rooms near to each other and in September 2002 they moved out into a shared house with friends.
The arrangement continued into the third year, which began platonically — in June 2003, William told reporters he did not have a “steady girlfriend”, while Kate was dating someone else.
By Christmas 2003, however, they were reported to be a couple and when they were photographed on a skiing holiday in March 2004, the palace did not deny they were together.
The course of true love never runs smoothly, however, and in April 2007 palace officials confirmed they had broken up, a fact blamed variously on William’s career and his being pictured out partying with various women.
There had been reports of an earlier split in 2005, and when asked about these, William said: “We were both very young, it was at university. We were both finding ourselves.”
Kate admitted she “wasn’t very happy” about the split but insisted: “It made me a stronger person.”
Within months they were back together, but wedding bells remained elusive — perhaps because, as he once told a journalist, William was determined not to marry “until I’m at least 28, or maybe 30”.
The prince turned 28 last June and then, after the couple effectively moved in together when William began work as a search and rescue pilot in Wales, he finally popped the question on a holiday in Kenya in October.
He said they had talked about getting married for about a year before and “we both just decided now was a really good time”. — Sapa-AFP