Maria Puente
USA TODAY
Published 3:45 p.m. UTC May 22, 2018
The just-married glow was still apparent Tuesday when Prince Harry and his American bride, the former Meghan Markle, made their first post-wedding appearance at a garden party event with Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace.
Three days after their spectacular nuptials at Windsor Castle blended royal pageantry with African-American zest, the newly minted Duke and Duchess of Sussex joined her father-in-law and his wife, Duchess Camilla of Cornwall, in the palace gardens for the Prince of Wales’ 70th Birthday Patronage Celebration.
She was dressed in a blush pink frock with sheer shoulders by Goat (a favorite label of Duchess Kate of Cambridge), according to a blog that tracks her fashion, plus a matching saucer-shaped hat. Her hair was once again dressed in a favorite look: a low chignon.
She appeared on the palace porch alongside Prince Charles and Camilla, all of them wearing broad smiles, as Harry, dressed in a morning suit and waistcoat, gave brief remarks. At one point, Meghan was spotted chuckling with Camilla, who was dressed in a mint green coat dress with white embroidering.
It was Meghan’s first royal garden party, and it almost certainly won’t be her last. The summer garden gala is a tradition prized as a rare opportunity for thousands of ordinary Brits to mingle with various and sundry royals in the beautiful palace gardens, as a reward for their charity work or achievements.
Over the 66 years of her reign, Queen Elizabeth II alone has hosted hundreds of thousands of her subjects at the four garden parties she holds every summer; she’s expecting 30,000 in total in 2018.
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More than 6,000 people representing 386 of Prince Charles’ patronages and 20 of his military affiliations were expected at Tuesday’s party to celebrate the prince’s birthday and his many charitable endeavors. Charles, who turns 70 in November, has been tireless for more than 40 years in identifying needs and then setting up charities to address them.
Besides downing thousands of cups of tea and munching 20,000 sandwiches and slices of cake, the guests will be treated to music by the Band of the Welsh Guards, a Welsh Male chorus, The National Youth Pipe Band, and a gospel choir, Kensington Palace said.
The latter should remind many of the stirring performance of Stand By Me by The Kingdom Choir, the British gospel group that helped make the nuptials of Charles’ younger son Harry, 33, and Meghan, 36, a royal wedding like no other staged in the 1,000-year history of the British monarchy.
Harry and Meghan postponed their honeymoon in order to support Prince Charles at the garden party.
The bond between the couple and the man Harry calls “Pa,” was on display during the wedding: Charles stepped in for Meghan’s ailing father, who was unable to make it to Windsor from his home in a beach resort in Mexico, by escorting her part way down the aisle to the altar in St. George’s Chapel.
And after the ceremony, as the bride and groom embarked on their fairy-tale carriage ride through Windsor, the Prince of Wales made sure that Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, was not alone, escorting her and Camilla on either arm as they made their way down the steps of the chapel.
Later that evening, after a reception for 600 hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at the castle, Charles hosted a sit-down dinner at nearby Frogmore House for 200 of the couple’s closest friends and family.
By midnight, he and other senior royals and guests had tactfully retired while the younger royal set held a more raucous “knees up” dance party, culminating in fireworks.
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Harry and Meghan spent their wedding night at Windsor Castle. They were spotted Monday by paparazzi returning to their Kensington Palace quarters, Nottingham Cottage, where they have been living since she moved to the United Kingdom last fall. They are expected to remain there for the time being but likely will get new digs elsewhere in the palace, which is undergoing renovations.
It’s not clear where they are going, or when they will depart, for their honeymoon and Kensington Palace is unlikely to say. Given that both are fond of Africa — Harry has said it’s his favorite continent — it’s possible they will go there.
When Harry’s brother Prince William married the former Kate Middleton in 2011, they, too, delayed their honeymoon for about a week and then went to a remote and exclusive island in The Seychelles, the archipelago in the Indian Ocean off East Africa.
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