Invitation to a Royal Wedding review: a highly imaginative look at the flag-waving appeal of what Harry and Meghan's big day

No one could accuse ITV of being slow to celebrate the upcoming nuptials of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Invitation to a Royal Wedding (ITV) opened the floodgates for a deluge of royal programming over for the next three weeks, which – given that most of what will happen is, as yet, top secret – promises to be highly imaginative in its jolly, bunting-draped, flag-waving appeal. 

Here we had Sir Trevor Macdonald and Julie Etchingham wondering what might be involved in organising a wedding on such a scale. Sir Trev wasn’t short on tips: “Like all weddings, the first thing is to secure the venue,” he said with a knowing smile. Whether he meant simply booking a room, or surrounding it with an impenetrable phalanx of armed police officers, was not clear. 

Etchingham, meanwhile, was off meeting a man who wasn’t actually supplying any flowers for the bouquet-to-be, but was willing to guess that it might comprise peonies and white roses. She visited the factory that produces Rich Tea biscuits, one of the key ingredients of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding cake in 2011. Oh, the glamour. Then again, she also met the chocolatiers who assembled that cake, and a selection of other lovely, happy people who previously contributed their ingenuity and skill – whether at embroidery, dressmaking, bouquet-making or cake-decorating – to ensure that royal weddings were both exquisite and hitch free.  

Best of all were the children from St Edward’s First School in Windsor, invited to act out a full dress rehearsal of the wedding, and afterwards opine upon everything from being a bridesmaid (“gross”) to designing a wedding dress fit for a Markle. My vote went to the little designer-to-be who, along with glass beads and lots of tinsel, suggested attaching love hearts to the dress “to make it look really, really royal”. Now, there’s an idea I’d love to see realised on the day.