Royal Pomp For Charles, Camilla

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,

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.

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.

Following a bit more than five hours of ceremony and a reception, the newlyweds intend to head for the hospitable quiet of Birkhall, Charles' retreat near Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

Charles' fiancee will enter the 17th-century town hall as Camilla Parker Bowles. She will leave half an hour later, technically the Princess of Wales — a title she wishes to avoid in deference to memories of Diana. She will be known instead as Duchess of Cornwall.

When Charles takes the throne she legally will be queen, but wishes to be known as Princess Consort — a bow to opinion polls which show some 70 percent of the population opposed to Queen Camilla.

It's only a few yards (meters) from the royal residence at Windsor Castle to Guildhall. But the couple's journey there has been long and rocky.

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 is 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.

That was not the end of their troubles.

They had intended to marry at Windsor Castle, but it wasn't licensed as a wedding venue. The ceremony was switched to the more prosaic Guildhall, and then the queen announced she wouldn't be there.

Newspapers sensed a snub, although Buckingham Palace said the monarch wanted to respect the couple's desire for a low-key wedding.

No heir to the throne had previously had a civil wedding, and there was some argument about whether that was legal. The government's chief legal adviser ruled that it was, and England's chief registrar subsequently overruled 11 objections to the wedding from members of the public.