Author: Maria Puente / Source: USA TODAY
Here are four reasons to celebrate Duchess Meghan on her birthday and beyond. USA TODAY
Duchess Meghan of Sussex turns 37 on Saturday – her first birthday as a member of the royal family – and wouldn’t we all like to know what Prince Harry has planned for the occasion.
Don’t hold your breath waiting to hear; Kensington Palace is never going to announce such “private” matters.
But we can already see how the former Meghan Markle – an unprecedented royal bride as a divorced, biracial American actress – has changed since her wedding on May 19, and how she is changing some royal conventions.
Christmas with the Windsors – before the wedding
Queen Elizabeth II and much of her extended family usually spend Christmas at Sandringham, her Norfolk estate, but the invitation doesn’t extend to mere fiancées: Up until now, a wedding ring was required before sitting down to holiday goose with the Windsors.
In fact, royal experts believe Meghan is the first royal fiancée invited to Sandringham for Christmas, including Christmas service with the queen, just weeks after her engagement to Prince Harry was announced in 2017. It’s a sign of how much Her Majesty wanted to welcome Meghan and please her grandson.
The ‘Meet Meghan Markle’ tour of Britain
As a former actress (TV’s “Suits”), Meghan was accustomed to public appearances, but royal public appearances are a different sort of stagecraft. Months before the wedding, she hit the road with Harry, traveling to key areas of the kingdom, including England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to see and be seen.
It was a first for a royal bride-to-be and it made sense: It was a chance for the British people and Meghan to get to know each other, and good training for Meghan to begin adapting to her new job.
First official appearance with the queen before the wedding
The Commonwealth, the organization of former nations of the old British Empire, is very close to the queen’s heart, so it was significant that Meghan was in Westminster Abbey with Harry and the rest of the family for the Commonwealth Day service, the largest annual interfaith gathering in the U.K., two months before the wedding.
Her prospective father-in-law – the future king – walked her down the aisle
Of all the unprecedented aspects of Harry and Meghan’s wedding in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle (the barnstorming sermon by American Bishop Michael Curry no doubt woke up the sedate Anglicans), the most poignant was when Meghan’s father-in-law…
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