Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer, whose engagement had been announced on Feb.24, were married at St Paul's Cathedral in London on July 29 (which day was observed as a public and bank holiday throughout Britain).
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The ceremony was solemnized by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie (who also gave the address), and by the Dean of St Paul's, and at the ceremony prayers were also said by inter alios Lord Coggan (Dr Runcie's predecessor as Archbishop of Canterbury), the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster (Cardinal Hume) and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
Prince Charles's two brothers, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward, stood as "supporters", and the ceremony was attended by heads of state or government of many countries, together with other members of European royal families and of Commonwealth or other foreign governments.
Security along the processional route was particularly strict, following an incident during the ceremony of the Trooping of the Colour on June 13, 1981, when a youth, identified as Mr Marcus Sarjeant (17), discharged a series of blank shots from an imitation revolver as the Queen was passing on horseback from Buckingham Palace to Horse Guards' Parade. Mr Sarjeant was subsequently charged with wilfully discharging the revolver near the person of Her Majesty the Queen with intent to alarm her, contrary to Section 2 of the 1842 Treason Act; he appeared before Bow Street magistrates' court on June 15 and was remanded in custody. At his trial on Sept.14 at the Central Criminal Court before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment; Sir Michael Havers (the Attorney General), for the prosecution, said that Mr Sarjeant, who had had a "total obsession with assassination", had first tried to obtain live ammunition for a real weapon in order to assassinate the Queen, and that it was only when he had been unable to obtain a suitable weapon that he had fallen back on the imitation gun.
After spending three nights at Broadlands, in Hampshire (formerly the home of Prince Charles's late great-uncle, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, who was murdered in August 1979), the Prince and Princess of Wales flew to Gibraltar on Aug. 1 to embark on a fortnight's Mediterranean cruise on board the Royal Yacht Britannia.
Following the announcement that the royal couple would embark from Gibraltar, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain declined the invitation made to them to attend the wedding ceremony in London. Although no formal public statement was made on the reasons for this decision, Sir Ian Gilmour then Lord Privy Seal, said in reply to questions in the House of Commons on July 22 that there had been exchanges between the British and Spanish Governments on the matter, that "the Spanish Government have peculiarly difficult problems and are bound to be sensitive about matters concerning Gibraltar" (over which they claimed territorial sovereigntyA), that "exchanges between the two royal families are entirely private and not a matter for me or the House to comment on", but that "it seems surprising to me that the Spanish Government should have made an issue out of a private visit at a time when we have been trying to improve relations between the two countries”.
(Times -Daily Telegraph - Hansard)
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