How will Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decide on their seating plan?

Speculation about the Royal Wedding continues…

From the editors of LOOK

We’re pretty sure that deciding on a seating plan is one of the biggest stresses when planning a wedding. But what happens when that wedding happens to include the Royal Family?

‘It’s very much a matter for the bride and the groom,’ royal expert Alastair Bruce told townandcountrymag.com whilst promoting The Coronation, a documentary that aired in the US over the weekend.

‘The thing about Prince Harry is that he’s not seen to be in the direct line of succession, and therefore the pressure on him to invite the long list of people, who had to be asked to the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, is not present,’ he continued.

There’s been quite a bit of chat about Meghan’s ‘hands-on’ involvement in her wedding planning, with reports suggesting that the young couple may have hired their own wedding planners. But they will also have the help of The Lord Chamberlain’s Office, a department within the royal household that organise events and ceremonies.

‘They will assist him. They know the layout of St. George’s Chapel, and they will guide him,’ Bruce told the publication.

According to the report, it is tradition for the family of the groom to sit on the right and for the bride’s family to take a seat on the left.

The pair are due to be wed on the 19th May at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, which is said to have a capacity of 800 people; this is much smaller than the 1,900 seats in Westminster Abbey.

The protocol expert also spoke about what would happen after the ceremony – once Meghan is officially part of the Royal Family.

‘The thing that’s special here is that Meghan will be marrying into a family that is very affected by what happened in 1953,’ Bruce says of the Queen’s coronation.

‘In a sense every member of the family is obligated to support the head of state to whom they’re related, and of course [Meghan’s] going to have to pick up that when she becomes a member of the royal family.’