Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have today announced they are engaged and will marry early next year, the couple have finally revealed.
They will appear on national TV in the UK this evening to discuss their engagement just 16 months after they got together after being introduced by a mutual friend in Toronto where she was filming Suits.
The couple, who revealed they were an item a year ago after a six-month secret relationship, got engaged earlier this month in London and will marry in spring 2018, Kensington Palace said.
Royal protocol dictated that the Queen had to give her grandson permission to marry the star just a week after she celebrated her own 70th wedding anniversary and in a statement she and Prince Philip said: ‘delighted for the couple and wish them every happiness’.
His brother William and sister-in-law Kate said in a joint statement: ‘The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge said of the engagement: ‘We are very excited for Harry and Meghan. It has been wonderful getting to know Meghan and to see how happy she and Harry are together’.
Harry also asked Meghan’s parents Thomas Markle and Doria Ragland, who divorced when their daughter was six, for her hand in marriage before popping the question a few weeks ago, it emerged today.
They said: ‘Our daughter has always been a kind and loving person. To see her union with Harry, who shares the same qualities, is a source of great joy for us as parents’.
Harry, 33, and his American fiancee, 36, have not said where they will hold the ceremony but if they choose the UK most senior royals marry at Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral or the chapel at Windsor Castle.
Meghan, who is divorced, could become a princess or alternatively be given the title Duchess of Sussex when she marries the fifth in line to the throne and joins the royal family.
But they are likely to wait until Prince William and Kate have their third child, which is due in April.
