Big Day For Charles And Camilla

Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles are now married, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips, and Camilla is Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cornwall.

The first official engagement of the newly married royal couple was the prayer service to bless the marriage that had just taken place.

Prince Charles and Camilla couldn't be married in an Anglican church because they are both divorced. They were married in a civil ceremony. There was no royal horse and carriage ride to a cathedral ceremony this time. Instead, Charles borrowed his mother's vintage Rolls-Royce. Instead of the massive crowd that normally gathers, several thousand dedicated souls lined the main street.

No moment was more anticipated than the arrival at the Guildhall. What would the bride be wearing? The answer: The bride was wearing an oyster silk basketweave coat with a herringbone stitch and a matching chiffon dress. She also wore a matching straw and lace hat with feather details. (Charles, in contrast to the military uniform he wore for his first wedding, donned formal morning wear.)

As Phillips reports, Camilla was never going to enter a "glamour-off" with the late Princess Diana, Charles' first wife. But the ensemble was well received, even if she looked uncomfortable with all the cameras clicking.

"Camilla looked completely terrified," royals watcher Ingrid Seward told Tracy Smith on The Saturday Early Show. "She had told friends beforehand that she was dreading all the photographers. She was dreading that moment when she'd have to pose for pictures. Actually, she didn't pose for pictures. She had a quick joke with Prince William and then dived into the car really quickly."

Seward also observed that "she hadn't even quite mastered the royal wave. She sort of got her hand caught up in her hat."

To lend family legitimacy to the occasion, Charles' sons, Princes William and Harry, were there, William as a witness to the marriage. The blessing ceremony lent the legitimacy of the church to the marriage.

The dedication service was being followed by a reception for 800 people at Windsor Castle, a large reception hosted by the queen. After that, Charles and Camilla will leave Windsor and fly up to Birkhall, Charles' retreat near Balmoral Castle in Scotland, for their honeymoon.

Earlier in the day, guests began to arrive at the wedding venue, the 17th century Guildhall, about half an hour before the ceremony was to begin. Excited cheers greeted Prince William and Prince Harry as the formally attired young men arrived. William smiled at the crowd, and Harry waved shyly.

Hundreds of people lined the streets of Windsor to show support for (or disapproval of) the marriage. Waving Union Jack flags or raising banners honoring the late Princess Diana, modest crowds waited in chilly sunshine for the nuptials, postponed a day for the pope's funeral.

The British public seems keenly aware that the moment Camilla Parker Bowles was married to Prince Charles, she became the Princess of Wales and potentially a queen of England. As far as the royal family is concerned, however, she is 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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

The most recent snafu -- the breaching of Windsor Castle security by some British journalists posing as delivery men -- is now being investigated by police.