Penny Junor: Prince William

What thousands of people had come to see was the kiss on the Buckingham Palace balcony, and it was duly delivered. Not once, but twice, which made the new Duchess giggle and the five hundred thousand or so well-wishers packed into the Mall below, and the thousands more watching it on the big screens in the parks, whoop and cheer with delight. Overhead, the sky was filled with aeroplanes as a Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and RAF Tornados and Typhoons flew past in formation. For the newly-weds, the nerve-racking parts of the day were over. From now on, it was party time.

Inside the Palace their 650 lunch guests awaited them, happily nibbling canapés and admiring the Old Masters on the walls. This first reception was for a mixture of friends, including many of the parents of friends, family and people from William’s official life. They were all bussed over from the Abbey, and William and Kate worked the rooms to make sure that they had a word with all those people not staying for the dinner in the evening. There were speeches; Prince William spoke charmingly about his beautiful bride and thanked his grandmother for her generosity in hosting the reception. Those who knew the Queen had seldom seen her so happy. One described her ‘playful’, another said she was ‘literally skipping’. She had taken a very personal hand in it. Every detail was run past her, the precise canapé menus, the wines, the arrangement of the rooms. She walked through them all and checked that everything was in order, and had many meetings with the Master of the Household about it. She genuinely saw it as her party and she wanted her guests to have the best time possible.

The Prince of Wales humorously reminisced about the groom as a teenager, shut in his room playing his music at full blast for hours on end and refusing to come out. And he talked about the two-fingered response he used to get from him whenever he tried to give him advice about the clothes he wore, or when he told him to stop slouching. But for the guests, it could have been any father of the groom affectionately ribbing his son, and there was no doubting the affection.

When the speeches were over and the cakes cut and the champagne drunk, everyone was asked to go into the gardens at the back of the Palace to see the couple off. And there waiting for them, to everyone’s surprise, was his father’s dark blue Aston Martin DB6 Mk II, with a few adjustments courtesy of Harry. It was festooned with heart-shaped balloons and coloured streamers and rosettes, with an L plate on the front and a new number plate on the back – JU5T WED.

As far as the public knew, the day for them had finished with the kiss. So when the Aston Martin appeared, nosing its way slowly out of the Palace gates at 3.35 p.m., with William at the wheel and Kate beside him, those still milling around outside went mad. They’d watched the procession earlier with William and Kate in a 1902 State Landau, followed by all the King’s horses and all the King’s men, and the sight of them smiling and waving from an open-topped classic car – just like any other newly-weds – was sensational. But the new Duke and Duchess had their own surprise in store. As they crept slowly along the Mall to Clarence House, a yellow Sea King helicopter appeared and hovered noisily just a few feet over their heads – a tribute from the RAF to a fellow search and rescue pilot.

It had been William’s idea to borrow the car and his father loved the idea. The person he had really wanted to surprise was Kate, but someone pointed out that she would need to be able to fit into it wearing her dress and only she knew how long the train was, so she was let in on the secret. But the car is very old and very tricky and William is not familiar with it. His greatest worry was that he would drive it out into the Mall in front of two billion people … and stall it. But it was not to be.

The evening party was for 300 of their closest friends and family. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh left the younger generations to it. The Queen had said to William, ‘You don’t really want me and Grandpa there in the evening, do you? So if you don’t mind, we’re going to allow you and your friends to have the run of the place.’ She had invited William and Kate to spend their wedding night at the Palace, which for logistical reasons was sensible, and she personally selected the suite they should stay in and checked that all was in order for them. She chose the Belgian Suite that President Obama and his wife had stayed in, a stunning set of rooms which get the morning light.

As the guests arrived back at the Palace, having gone away for a few hours after the lunch and changed into black tie, they were bagpiped through a candlelit courtyard into pre-dinner drinks where vintage pink champagne and peach bellinis awaited. Kate had changed into another flowing white satin Sarah Burton creation, with a little angora bolero cardigan, and looked radiant. Dinner, at tables of ten in the ballroom, was a veritable feast devised by top chef and restaurateur Anton Mosimann. They began with seafood from Wales, went on to lamb from Highgrove and finished with a trio of mini-puddings – all of it accompanied by distinguished wines. After coffee and petit fours came the speeches and the high spot of the night.

Harry, acting as compère, completely stole the show, with impeccable comic timing and brilliant one-liners. He had everyone in tears of laughter as he hilariously recounted tales from their childhood of being beaten up by his older brother and shot by air rifles, and teased him rotten about everything from his romantic style to his receding hairline. But there were emotional moments too. William had said at his engagement that in giving Kate his mother’s ring, he hoped to include her in all the fun and excitement, and both boys made sure she was part of the evening celebrations, by each making moving tributes to her in the midst of all the mirth.

The father of the bride joked about the time William had almost blown the roof off the house when he landed his helicopter in the garden, and the awkward conversation they had had when he asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage, but he also spoke warmly about William and about how well he fitted into the family. William returned the compliment and spoke movingly about Kate. The final speech was a double-act. Thomas van Straubenzee and James Meade took to the floor and delivered a series of quick gags about their friend, which again had the audience helpless with laughter.

Dancing followed until three o’clock in the morning. For two full hours the Brit Award-winning singer Ellie Goulding and her band played live, then DJs took over with a mixture of music, and the booming bass could be heard halfway down the Mall. The final number was ‘She Loves You’ by the Beatles, which had everyone on the dance floor singing their hearts out, after which they were shepherded out into the gardens once again, for William and Kate to make their second and final departure of the day. This time their going-away car was a bright yellow little Fiat 500 – another surprise for their friends and family – which William had secretly borrowed from David Linley. But since they were spending the night at the Palace, the chauffeur didn’t have far to go. While the guests drunkenly cheered and waved and wished them luck, including both sets of parents – everyone stayed to the very end – they stood up with their heads through the open roof laughing and waving, while they were driven around two corners and delivered to another door. ‘It was simply magical,’ said one guest. ‘The best party ever imaginable.’

Harry, still in party mood, as they all were, then led all the young onto a waiting coach and over to the Goring Hotel where they carried on partying safely and privately until five. The brothers had discussed what might happen when they were kicked out of the Palace and realised that if everyone just spilled out into Mayfair and the usual nightclubs at three in the morning, those places would be crawling with inquisitive diary journalists. Better to keep everyone together, and so they organised an after-party at the Goring.