Updated 14.07 GMT

It has emerged that Peter Phillips and Autumn Kelly have accepted around £500,000 ($1m) for a 20-page spread in Hello! magazine in advance of their wedding at Windsor next week. The decision is said to have caused “consternation” among Palace officials.

Peter Phillips and his bride-to-be Canadian Autumn Kelly

A Buckingham Palace spokesman declined to comment last night, but a “senior Royal source” is reported as saying, “This has not gone down well. Peter has always managed to stay out of the limelight by claiming that he is a private person. This rides a coach and horses through that.”

Now we hear that William and Kate will miss the wedding because they are going on holiday for two weeks. That sounds like a deliberately lame excuse coming so late in the day, especially as Kate apparently received her invitation — presumably accepted — many weeks ago.

I suspect the Hello! sellout has a great deal to do with this decision. Senior Royals have always kept clear of the celebrity publicity machine where weddings are auctioned off to the highest bidder.

It’s a shame that the first “Royal” wedding of Prince William and Harry’s generation has been tarnished by this episode. Who else will pull out now?

It seems that Prince Harry will formally present Chelsy Davy to the Queen at Windsor during the wedding weekend. Although she has met Prince Charles and Camilla while staying at Highgrove and at other events, she has never met the Queen. This represents a major upgrade for Chelsy in her relationship with the Royal Family and confirms other reports of the seriousness of the relationship with Harry.

1. Prince William and helicopters
Another day, another row over where Prince William landed his helicopter. Haven’t these people got better things to occupy their time?

A Chinook helicopter like the one that William landed at Kate’s place

It seems the second in line to the Throne used a field adjoining girlfriend Kate Middleton’s home to practise landing and taking off. He did so with permission from the Middletons and the RAF.

The MoD said in a statement: “Battlefield helicopter crews routinely practise landing in fields and confined spaces away from their airfields as a vital part of their training for operations. These highly-honed skills are used daily in conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Opportunities to use alternatives are therefore regularly seized. The aircraft landed in the field, after taking all necessary safety precautions, and was on the ground for 20 seconds. No one got on or off the aircraft. This was very much a routine training sortie that achieved essential training objectives.”

The idea that William was “showing off” is, of course, utterly preposterous.

2. Chelsy invite
Chelsy Davy has been invited at last to the wedding of Peter Phillips and Autumn Kelly on May 17.

One of her university friends in Leeds is quoted as saying, “Chels received the invite last week but she has yet to reply. At the moment, her focus is her work. This is a tough term and she’s studying very hard. She was really put out not to have been invited, not least because Kate got an invite. Chels doesn’t particularly like hanging out with the young Royal crowd – she far prefers relaxing with her friends – but she doesn’t like to be forgotten about.”

Chelsy has not yet responded to the invitation.

3. Harry back on with Chelsy
Another day, another twist in the Prince Harry / Chelsy Davy romance saga. Many of us guessed they were back on again after their recent joint holiday in southern Africa.

“They are very much back on,” the Mail has been told. “Harry came up to Leeds and it was all very hush-hush.

“They stayed at a mate’s house as there are always a load of photographers outside Chelsy’s place, so no one actually knew that Harry was in town.”

That was two weeks ago. Together with Chelsy’s invitation to the wedding next month, it looks like it’s normal service as usual.

A stag do on the Isle of Wight with Prince William and Prince Harry, plus Mike Tindall and a couple of dozen other rowdies was never going to be a sedate affair for Peter Phillips.

Let’s put it this way, I’m glad I’m not one of them right now — Monday morning. At one point Peter was said to have gone AWOL, only to be found slumped in a shop doorway.

Asked later how he was coping with the weekend, he replied ruefully, “I’m still alive.”

Harry said, “It’s been an awesome stag do. It will just take us a while to recover.”

Peter is due to marry Autumn Kelly at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on May 17. It was probably well advised to hold the pre-nuptial bacchanal well in advance of the event. Let’s hope he recovers in time.

At some point a stag do should have a veil discreetly drawn over the activities of its participants, if only to preserve public decency. As an example, the Daily Mail piece contains more information than many of us might like to know, but read it here if you really want the gory details.

Kate Middleton will go to the Windsor wedding of Peter Phillips, non-Royal grandson of the Queen, and Canadian, Autumn Kelly.

Chelsy Davy — Cinders will not be going to the ball

The ceremony, described as a very small and private occasion, will apparently be held in St. George’s Chapel as originally thought. However, the recent mention of Frogmore House on the Windsor estate perhaps gives a clue to the venue of the reception afterwards.

A disappointment for some is that Chelsy Davy has not been included on the guest list. An insider has told the Mail on Sunday that both Prince Harry and Chelsy are angry at her absence — she was not invited to ski at Klosters either, suggesting some reluctance to accept her on the part of the Royal Family.

[Speculation] Of course if Prince William and Kate Middleton are secretly engaged — as has been suggested in the German press — it would explain Chelsy’s omission. [End of speculation].

The Royal insider comments, “Chelsy has been left off the list for the wedding and all the invitations have gone out now. Peter and his fiancee Autumn sent invites out a few weeks ago for what is going to be a very small and private occasion.

“The explanation being offered is that, at the time, Harry and Chelsy were going through a wobble. But Chelsy sees it as a direct snub and is pretty miffed at not having been invited, especially as Kate plans to go. Chelsy feels like she is often left out of family engagements. She was not invited to ski, which doesn’t bother her because she’d rather go home to Cape Town, but she would like to have been invited to Peter’s wedding. She’s becoming the Royals’ Cinderella.”

If Cinders needs a role model on how to be a Princess-in-waiting, she would do well to take a close look at Kate Middleton.