The Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton will, we know, take place around 11am this Friday, 29th April. Wherever you are, here is a short guide on ways you can watch the event – live.
Most of us Brits will be lucky enough to have the day off work as it has been designated a special Bank Holiday but travelling to London to camp out on the streets to catch a glimpse of the wedding procession as it passes by is not an option. The vast majority of people who watch the Royal Wedding will do so from the comfort of their own homes, via a TV screen or computer.
If you are travelling to London to soak up the atmosphere, you can view the ceremony live on giant screens constructed in the major London parks like Hyde Park and Regents Park.
They will be showing the mainstream TV coverage, probably from the BBC. So what will you be able to see and when? If you are an armchair royalist, sit back and relax, because there is a whole day of coverage and you can pick and choose your channel throughout the day so you don’t miss a thing.
You can also watch the event take place online (live streaming) at www.YouTube.com/TheRoyalChannel so most of you who have to work can still catch all the action live!
On which TV Channel is the Royal Wedding to be Shown?
The BBC and ITV have full live coverage of the event from very early on Friday morning so the question is more likely whether you can turn on your TV and avoid the Royal Wedding, but we know you don’t want to do that, so here are all the TV scheduling details you need:
BBC One
If you only want to see the basics (the ceremony itself) switch on BBC 1 at 8:15 GMT. That is when you will begin to get the arrival of wedding guests at Westminster Abbey. The wedding service is due to start at 11am GMT (depending on how fashionably and traditionally late Catherine Middleton chooses to be!). Most of the televised broadcasts should be over by 5pm GMT but no doubt you will be seeing the day’s highlights throughout the weekend.
Anchorman Huw Edwards will be based at Buckingham Palace but there will also be outside broadcasts from all over London.
The BBC website bbc.co.uk/royalwedding will also offer live streaming all day.
ITV1
ITV is the place to get all the early speculation about the dress, wedding music, etc, because coverage of the Royal Wedding begins at 6am with the Daybreak programme coming live from a studio set up outside Buckingham Palace especially for the royal wedding.
There will also be broadcasts from Bucklebury, Kate Middleton’s home village and of course, Westminster Abbey. There will also be some coverage from Camp Bastion (Afghanistan), visited by Prince William in 2010.
From 8.30am, old ITV favourites like Alastair Stewart and Mary Nightingale will provide coverage at various points throughout the day, from important locations on the wedding procession route.
The Westminster Abbey coverage will be done in part by political editor Tom Bradby, who conducted the engagement interview of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, so you can expect a nice insight into the couple’s lives.
There will also be a report from St Andrews, where Prince William and Catherine met and fell in love while studying at university there, and from Anglesey, where the couple currently live.
If you miss any of the live action there will be rolling coverage throughout the day from 8am, with extended news flashes and a special round-up of all the day’s news at 6pm.
Watching the Royal Wedding in the USA and parts of Canada
Royal Wedding fans in the USA and parts of Canada will also have plenty of opportunities to watch the celebrations. Here are some of the shows and channels providing Royal Wedding coverage:
- “The Early Show” on local CBS stations
- “Good Morning America” on local ABC station
- “Today” on NBC
- FOX channel
- TLC (satellite channel 183)
- CNN (satellite channel 200)
- MSNBC (satellite channel 209)
- E! (satellite channel 114)
Don’t forget too that there is also BBCAmerica. Check out their website for more details.
