As England’s oldest royal borough, Kingston has special links with royal weddings spanning more than nine centuries.

They start in the 11th century, when King Canute came to the town to negotiate a marriage settlement.

The Surrey Comet’s reports do not span back quite so far, but major royal weddings over the years have all been reported on.

In April 1923, the paper’s report of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s wedding to King George VI was grand and poetic.

It read: “The bridegroom’s face lights up with radiant happiness. As her eye meet his, they sparkle and flash, and it seems to those who watch that the young lovers have forgotten in that moment of reunion the thousands gazing upon them.”

When their daughter, the now Queen Elizabeth II, wed Prince Philip in 1947, wedding fever shook the borough.

Crowds swarmed the train station platforms at Esher, Surbiton and Malden, in a desperate bid to catch a glimpse of the couple’s royal wedding train as it carried them to Winchester for the first stage of their honeymoon.

Malden sold 700 platform tickets, but it was those at Surbiton that got the best view of Prince Philip’s blue naval uniform as the train steamed through.

Roxy Cinema, in Surbiton, arranged a cafe viewing of the wedding and by 8am, people were queueing to get in.

Others flocked to radio shops to listen to eyewitness accounts, and many of those were wives with shopping baskets.

One man raised laughs when he said: “For once midday meals will be late. Britain’s housewives are going to let down their husbands for the first time.”

Perhaps most memorable wedding celebrated in the royal borough was that of Prince Charles and the people’s princess, Diana Spencer.

In Kingston, the chamber of commerce spent hours hanging street decorations, and butcher Graham Briggs donated a 33lb to Cambria children’s home, in Berrylands, and to the children’s ward at Kingston Hospital, so they could join in the festivities.

It was the first time in 107 years that the Prince of Wales had married under that title - the last time being when Prince Charles’ great-great-grandfather, who became Edward VII, married the beautiful Princess Alexandra of Denmark.

That wedding was marked with a 40ft bonfire on the Fairfield, and at 7am the town’s guns boomed out.

The borough’s wedding gift to Charles and Diana – two engraved crystal goblets - almost never made it when one was smashed days before the wedding.

Engraver Norman Walmset worked through the night to etch a replacement.

Another clanger was avoided at the union of the Duke and Duchess of York.

Councillors and council officers raised enough to buy Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson a gold barometer and round the world clock, but it was noticed at a photocall that the wrong date had been engraved.

It was hastily withdrawn, and Councillor Peter Gray admitted he had mixed the date up with the date his son turned 21.