The Mail on Sunday is reporting that friends of Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall say they will marry in May next year. They have been secretly engaged for some months.

Mike and Zara at Cheltenham races earlier this year

The favoured venue, as of now, seems to be St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, with a reception at Frogmore House. Zara and Mike were clearly impressed with the ambience of her brother Peter’s nuptials in May. They will not be repeating the involvement of Hello! magazine, however.

Zara’s father, Mark Phillips, who coaches his daughter in her three-day eventing specialism, has asked her to delay an announcement until after the Beijing Olympics to concentrate on winning a gold medal. Zara has been the European Champion and currently holds the World title.

Any other Royal wedding planned for next year is likely to be in mid-summer to avoid a clash.

As it’s a slow news Sunday here’s a shot of the River Exe I took this morning.

The River Exe at Exeter with two canoeists enjoying the June weather

That is the question!

In a slow news week, the story has used up a lot of column inches in the press, much of it off beam.

Kate, it is suggested, is always called Catherine by her family and old friends. It’s only those cads in the public prints and the paparazzi who call her Kate.

In private, the air is thick with Catherines, in public you can’t hear yourself think for Kates.

One headline in the hard-working Daily Mail suggests she wants to be known as Queen Catherine, and the article provides us with a list of past Queens bearing that noble name.

However, as is often the case, all is not what it seems in the journalistic melting pot that is Royal reporting.

Today we have another clarification — from a credible source — suggesting that Kate’s younger sister Pippa always calls her Kate. And others in her circle use it too, so she can’t be that much against it, at least in her pre-married state.

But the main reason the Kate moniker will stick is that a search on Google for Kate Middleton produces 1,220,000 mostly relevant results, while Catherine Middleton yields 455,000, with seven out of the first ten pointing to someone else.

Kate is the brand. Until she becomes a Duchess or a Queen, perhaps she should accept the Waity Katie and Kiss me Kate headers for the sake of the Google juice. They don’t serve it in Boujis, but it’s better for your health than Crack Daddy cocktails.

How could a “private” Royal wedding between the Queen’s normally well-behaved grandson and a Canadian secretarial assistant end in a minor constitutional crisis?

Weddings and funerals are what Royalty does best, aren’t they?

Last night, Princes William and Harry let it be known they are furious about the extensive Hello! magazine coverage of the event and their own unwitting involvement.

A Royal source said, “Neither Peter nor the magazine sought their approval, and if they had, it certainly would not have been given. What has happened has not gone down well at all. They are very unhappy about it … as far as Harry, Kate and Chelsy are concerned, they were just letting their hair down at a private family event.”

Looking back over the titles of our wedding reports here at Royal Anecdotes, words like “fiasco”, “fandango”, “woes”, “pullout” and “sellout” predominate, some as far back as May the 5th.

I’m inclined to believe that naivety was the central cause of this slow motion train wreck of a wedding, mainly because very few of the participants knew the full extent of the sell-out to Hello! magazine, or even that the official photographs were to be handed to the notoriously voracious celebrity glossy.

From the Kelly family we were fed the sob story that they couldn’t afford the £50,000 ($100,000) for the reception in Frogmore House. That doesn’t begin to stack up because such a relatively small sum would easily have been found from the Royal Family, or their many supporters, had word gone around.

My guess is that Autumn Kelly didn’t want the state of the family finances to become known, so senior Royals were kept in the dark while she used her celebrity connections in Michael Parkinson’s office to broker the £500,000+ ($1m) deal. In that case, Peter Phillips is partly culpable. At some point his instincts as a member of the Royal Family must have kicked in to warn him of the dangers.

As for the Queen, who is now open season for criticism by some anti-Royal Members of Parliament, she must bitterly reflect that nothing much has gone right since the retirement of Sir Robin Janvrin, her Private Secretary, last year.

In November, there was the “double-booking” of a Commonwealth Conference in Africa with her Diamond Wedding Party at the Ritz — eventually cancelled.

Then came Gold Cup day at Cheltenham, when the Queen found she was to open the ill-fated Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport on the same day. Other confusions have occurred too, culminating in the appalling Palace handling of the Phillips wedding. Dare we suggest that the Queen needs a new Private Secretary?

As for Peter and Autumn, they will not easily be allowed to forget the damage they have inflicted on the Monarchy for personal gain.

Let’s hope future Royal weddings, now queueing in the pipeline, are better handled and managed. Some frankness from those concerned might be a very good start.

There’s an interesting article in the Telegraph by Hannah Betts suggesting that the Queen is using Camilla as a fashion role model.

Although slightly tongue-in-cheek the piece points out the similarity of their attire at last week’s Windsor wedding.

There’s also another dig at Princess Beatrice who is described as living on her own fashion planet.

As I know nothing about fashion, you should read it yourself.

Read the complete article.