Big Day For Charles And Camilla

After 30 Years Of Waiting, Prince Charles Weds His True Love

(CBS/AP) 
Rivers and Prunella Scales (TV's Sybil Fawlty) — are among those who attended the blessing service at Windsor Castle, where they were invited to join the couple in confessing "manifold sins and wickedness," in the words of the Book of Common Prayer.

There is no reference to adultery or other specific misdeed, and such confessions are standard in Anglican wedding blessings. Nonetheless, the tabloid press went into a frenzy, with the Daily Mirror printing the headline "We have sinned" over a picture of the couple wearing devil's horns.

Some people have expressed reservations about Charles — a future supreme governor of the Church of England — going against the traditional resistance to remarriage of divorcees. But Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said he was satisfied with the arrangements, and agreed to preside at the service in St. George's Chapel.

Charles met Camilla Shand more than 30 years ago, discovering a shared sense of humor and love of rural life. But the prince sailed off on an eight-month voyage with the Royal Navy without cementing their relationship; in his absence she married Andrew Parker Bowles.

In 1981, the prince married 20-year-old Diana Spencer in full regal pomp at St. Paul's Cathedral. The beautiful young princess won the nation's heart, but didn't hold her husband's. Within a few years, Charles had resumed his relationship with Parker Bowles. "There were three of us in that marriage," Diana said later — although she acknowledged affairs of her own.

Many Britons took Diana's view, vilifying Parker Bowles as a royal home-wrecker.

Charles' and Camilla's marriages both collapsed — she was divorced in 1995, he in 1996. Andrew Parker Bowles remarried in 1996, and was on the guest list for Saturday's religious ceremony.

After Diana's death in 1997, Charles and Camilla cautiously began making their relationship public. Their first public appearance together came in 1999; the first public kiss in 2001. In February, the prince and Parker Bowles announced that they would wed.