Prince William and his fiancée Kate Middleton, who announced their engagement on Tuesday, have started planning for their wedding next year. However, no details have been released as yet about the date and venue of the wedding due to be held in London in spring or summer next year.
Britain is excited by the engagement and the news of the upcoming wedding, going by the multi-page pullouts on the couple in the mainstream newspapers and incessant coverage on television. However, people in the UK, which is going through a financial crisis and facing very tough spending cuts by the coalition government, are also worried about who will bear the cost of the wedding.
The British monarch receives a fixed annual payment, known as the Civil List, which is used to foot the bill for the royal household, including staff salaries and costs for the queen, her husband and the immediate royal family who perform royal duties. The civil list in 2009 was £14.2 million. The British monarchy cost taxpayers £38.2 million, or 62 pence per person.
A debate has started over whether the UK government should shoulder some expense for the wedding or should Queen Elizabeth II pay for it from her personal fortune. The British queen’s personal wealth is estimated to be about £290 million by the Sunday Times Rich List.
The Clarence House said “the couple are very mindful of the current economic situation,” but did not give any indication of estimated cost of the wedding.
The couple, who got engaged in October during a holiday in Kenya, presented a happy front for their first television interview.
William revealed that he had given his mother Diana’s engagement ring, a sapphire circled by diamonds, to his fiancée. “It’s my mother’s engagement ring so I thought it was quite nice because obviously she’s not going to be around to share any of the fun and excitement of it all — this was my way of keeping her close to it all,” the 28-year-old second-in-line to the British throne said.
Kate described Diana as “an inspirational woman” and said she would have “loved to have met her.”
William, who will live with his fiancée in north Wales, made it clear that no was expecting Kate to fill in mother’s shoes. “There’s no pressure though. There’s no pressure because like Kate said it is about carving your own future. No-one is trying to fill my mother’s shoes. What she did is fantastic. It’s about making your own future and your own destiny and Kate will do a very good job of that.”
He also revealed that he had waited so long to propose in order “to give her a chance to see in and to back out if she needed to before it all got too much. I’m trying to learn from lessons done in the past and I just wanted to give her the best chance to settle in and to see what happens on the other side.”
Kate, during a photocall at St. James’ Palace, admitted that she had found joining the royal family “quite a daunting prospect,” but added that “hopefully I’ll take it in my stride.”