Royal Pomp For Charles, Camilla

(CBS/AP)  At last the prince weds his true love.

It's been a steep and rocky road for Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, and the pair ducked family snubs and swerved around media snafus all the way. The pair's marriage has been delayed for years by complications and, once the ceremony was announced and the day was solidified, it was postponed for yet another day by Pope John Paul II's funeral.

The royal marriage of two fifty-something divorcees had the town of Windsor full of pomp and buffed to a royal luster in preparation for Saturday's noontime ceremony.

The British public seems keenly aware that the moment Camilla Parker Bowles is married to Prince Charles, she will be the Princess of Wales and potentially a queen of England.

As far as the royal family is concerned, however, she will be Duchess of Cornwall — a concession to public opposition to the new wife assuming any of the titles of the late Princess Diana. Public opinion polls show 70 percent of the population is opposed to her being queen.

That is, if they care at all.

CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports: "A future king marries and hardly anybody seems to care."

The monarchy may still perform a constitutional function in Britain and still contribute to the Old World hail Fredonia appeal to tourists, but its days as an institution at the center of British life are over, Phillips wrote.

And, one of the few thoroughly respected royals, Prince Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth II, is not attending the civil ceremony.

As Windsor groomed for Saturday's ceremony, the faithful scouted sidewalk vantage points.

"It's a lot of hubbub but they should have been married a long time ago," said Lorraine Milligan, a tourist from Phoenix, Ariz., as scores of journalists, police officers and road sweepers swarmed over the street below Windsor Castle's ramparts.

Saturday's wedding has brought a buzz to Windsor, a handsome riverside town 20 miles west of London that has been home to British monarchs for a millennium.

Hotels are fully booked, and souvenir shops are doing a brisk trade in royal wedding mugs, tea towels and even jigsaw puzzles — although most are emblazoned with the wrong date, April 8, since the pope's funeral delayed the ceremony a day.

From mugs to mocking masks, perhaps the casual eye with which the British view their monarchy is indicative of its decline in significance as years tick by.

A few royal supporters felt let down by the low-key civil ceremony.

"I think it's terrible that they're not making much of a thing of this," said retiree Maggie Hughes. As an unseasonably cold north wind whipped over the castle battlements under an ominous gray sky, Hughes sensed the malevolent hand of faceless royal advisers.

"I'm sure it was done deliberately," she said, bothered by the dreary weather. "The people in dark suits said 'What about April?' knowing the weather would be like this."

In fact, on Friday's The Early Show,

Ingrid Seward

paraphrased Camilla as having said, "I'll marry you, but I want to have fun people at my wedding. I don't want a lot of 'have-to-haves.' I want the people who have been really good to us…and that we really like."

And that's the route they've taken, Seward adds: "Looking at the guest list, there's a lot of extremely rich people going who have helped Prince Charles. There's a large American contingent. Joan Rivers is going,"

Some 800 guests — including Rivers and Prunella Scales (TV's Sybil Fawlty) — will attend a blessing service at Windsor Castle, where they will be invited to join the couple in confessing "manifold sins and wickedness," in the words of the Book of Common Prayer.

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