(England Twitter)-William and Kate will become the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, it has just been announced. Bad news for commenters who suggested Duke and Duchess of Scunthorpe.
2:47 a.m. EDT - Crowds building at Westminster Abbey
There are more people on the streets leading to and around the Abbey, with lots of people coming out from the nearby Westminster tube stop and walking over. The souvenir sellers are out and there are plenty of them.
2:39 a.m. EDT - Dean of Westminster Abbey nervous
Rev. John Robert Hall, the Dean of Westminster Abbey, tells Sky News he's a little nervous. "But nervous and excited are very similar things, and I'm very excited." He says he was thinking about trying to help calm the royal couple's nerves upon greeting them with a joke or two but now "can't imagine doing that." He says Kate Middleton seems like a very calm person anyway.
2:00 a.m. EDT - Partly cloudy in London
At 7:00 a.m. in London - 2:00 a.m. Eastern - the weather forecast is for partly cloudy skies and 10 C (about 50 F). Clouds for most of the day with sunny intervals beginning around 1 p.m. in London. That's an improvement over the heavy showers that were forecast earlier in the week.
12:00 a.m. EDT - It's quiet outside Westminster Abbey
At 5:00 a.m. in London - midnight Eastern - there are light crowds outside Westminster Abbey and Parliament. The number of people at the Abbey doesn't seem to have changed much since earlier in the day.
There doesn't appear to be anyone lining the barricades on Whitehall Street at the moment.
The route to and from Westminster Abbey will take in The Mall, Horse Guards Road, Horse Guards Parade, Horse Guards Arch, Whitehall, Parliament Square, and Broad Sanctuary. Here's a map of the route. The service will be broadcast through speakers along the route, and there are giant screens in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square. There are more details on the royal wedding website here. The full programme and order of service is available online here (with a nice drawing of the route on pages four and five) and here.
The service will be conducted by the Dean of Westminster, John Hall, and the couple will be married by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, will give the address.
Philippa Middleton, Kate's sister, will be the maid of honour, while Prince Harry will be his brother's best man. The bridesmaids and page boys are all young children, and mostly relatives.
The music will be performed by two choirs, two fanfare teams and one orchestra: the choir of Westminster Abbey, the choir of Her Majesty's Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, the fanfare team from the Central Band of the Royal Air Force, the state trumpeters of the Household Cavalry and the London Chamber Orchestra. More details of the musicians can be found here.
first royal wedding of the social networking age has quite properly got not only its own website, but also its own Twitter account, Facebook page, Flickr site and YouTube channel, which will be broadcasting the service live. Watch out if you sign up for that Facebook page; the resulting message "X likes the British monarchy" may come as an unwelcome surprise to some of your friends.
