The Queen (seen at the wedding of Prince William and Kate) will attend the marriage ceremony of Prince Harry and Miss Markle
Buckingham Palace has confirmed that the Queen will attend the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
It was also revealed today that the royal family will pay for the wedding, including the church service, the music, the flowers and the reception.
But taxpayers are expected to pick up the bill for security at the event, as they did for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding in April 2011.
Then, it was estimated that the total cost for the 5,000 police officers and the clear-up operation on the streets afterwards was as high as £20million.
The Metropolitan Police will start planning immediately for the high-profile event, with the current threat level for international terrorism in the UK is severe.
Extra officers will be drafted in to patrol the streets on the day amid tight security surrounding the chosen venue.
Miss Markle will also have been assigned a royal bodyguard from the Metropolitan Police’s Royalty and Specialist Protection Command.
Meanwhile a security detail was pictured yesterday outside her mother Doria Ragland’s home in the Windsor Hills area of Los Angeles.
At William and Kate’s wedding, planners put the cost of a cake or cakes to feed guests at up to £50,000 – or as little as £10,000 for a ‘modest’ version.
The Duchess of Cambridge’s dress was said to have cost up to £250,000 while flowers for Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace were said to have been between £200,000 to £500,000.
It was later billed as the most expensive wedding in history, and will cost much more than Harry and Meghan’s big day.
It was estimated security for the event cost as much as £20million, which dwarfed the £7.4million price of security at the G20 protests in London in 2009.
As a more direct comparison, the 1981 wedding between Prince Charles and Diana was estimated to have cost £4million – which equates to around £12million today.