The Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles will use their wedding on Saturday as an opportunity to "earnestly repent" the "manifold sins and wickedness" of their past deeds.

It was confirmed on Thursday that the two divorcees, rather than choosing more newly-written prayers of penitence, will join the congregation in reading the strongest act of penitence from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

The confession reads: "We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, by thought, word and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us."

Among the 28 guests at the intimate civil ceremony at the 17th century Guildhall, Windsor, will be Princes William and Harry, Princess Anne, her husband, Rear Admiral Timothy Laurence, and her children Peter and Zara Phillips, Prince Andrew and his daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, and Mrs Parker Bowles's children Tom and Laura.

After the half-hour ceremony, the prince and the new Duchess of Cornwall will sign the marriage register, which will be witnessed by Prince William and Tom Parker Bowles. The couple will also sign the royal register, which records royal marriages and baptisms. They will then retire to Windsor Castle to begin preparations for the blessing of their marriage while the Queen entertains selected foreign royals and other guests over lunch.

The Queen is not expected to formally greet the couple on their return to the castle, but she and the Duke of Edinburgh will attend the service of prayer and dedication at the castle's St George's Chapel.

Nearly 800 guests are expected to attend the 45-minute ceremony, for which the Dean of Windsor has written a special prayer, with a further 2,000 members of the public allowed into the castle grounds.

The guests include Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, musician Jools Holland, actor and writer Sanjeev Bhaskar and his partner Meera Syal, Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy and their wives, designer Philip Treacy, actor Kenneth Branagh, novelist Jilly Cooper and comedian Joan Rivers.

Barbara Fell, the landlady of one of Prince Charles's favorite pubs - the Rose and Crown in Boylston, northern England - along with Joe and Hazel Relph, owners of a Cumbrian bed and breakfast and the royal couple's local vicar, the Reverend Christopher Mulholland, are also invited, as are a number of foreign royals and dignitaries and the heads of some of the couple's favorite charities.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who urged the prince to marry the woman with whom he was unfaithful to Diana, Princess of Wales, will give a reading from the Book of Revelation while actor Timothy West, who has known the couple for some years, will read from Ode on Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth.

All the guests will be entertained by the Queen at a reception in Windsor Castle's state apartments before the couple depart for Scotland.

Tabloids show no mercy

On Thursday, British police ordered an inquiry into how a journalist drove a fake "bomb" into the heart of the royal castle where the royal wedding will be held.

An undercover reporter said he tricked police into letting him take a van carrying a brown box marked "bomb" close to Queen Elizabeth's apartments at Windsor Castle, 32 kilometers west of London.

"This apparent breach of security at Windsor Castle in the run-up to the royal wedding raises a serious concern," a police spokeswoman said in a statement.

"It is only right that the facts are established before any action is taken against any police personnel who may be culpable."

This is just one case which demonstrates the tabloids' combustible relationship with the royal family.

In a far cry from the sycophancy of bygone days, newspapers have delighted in reporting a series of mishaps that have befallen the wedding plans. One tabloid even published an altered front-page photo depicting the bride-to-be as a horse.

"Wedding switch forces Charles' old nag to miss the big race," the Daily Star wrote about a scheduling conflict, now resolved, between the wedding and the Grand National horse race.

The Star covered the first news of the wedding under the headline "Boring Old Gits to Wed."

Others have also taken pot shots, with the top-selling Sun proclaiming: "JINXED: Queen's despair at Charles's curse."

Opinion polls show that most Britons do not want Camilla to be queen. Many blame her for breaking up the marriage between Charles and Princess Diana, who was so loved by the tabloids for her ability to boost profits that she was known as the Princess of Sales.

With pop culture increasingly focused on celebrity gossip, the royals are not immune. Charles and Camilla's wedding is the latest chapter in a decades-old story of mutual dependence and loathing between the Windsors and the British press.

(China Daily April 9, 2005)