As the country prepared itself for a national celebration, Prince Charles and Lady Diana were each wrestling with doubts.

Even before their engagement was announced, Charles had written to a friend: ‘I expect that it will be the right thing in the end.’ While Diana, a few days before the wedding, discovered a bracelet Charles intended to give to Camilla Parker Bowles.

Lady Diana Spencer, 20, is waking up in the Queen Mother’s home, Clarence House.

Jonathan Mayo gives a detailed account of Prince Charles and Lady Diana's wedding day on July 29th 1981.

The week has been a celebratory marathon — girls caroused in Lady Di wigs, London’s exclusive Embassy Club held a party for people called Charles and Diana and, at a firework display in Hyde Park the night before the wedding, Prince Charles lit the first of 101 beacons that stretched between Land’s End and the Shetlands.

Charles said she was ‘marvellous, oh, a tower of strength’.

Before the fireworks and as the Queen Mother watched the Dad’s Army film on TV, Diana had supper with her sister Jane, who was staying at Clarence House with her.

Diana said later she had an attack of bulimia that night, after ‘eating all I could find’.

William Tallon, a page of the Queen Mother’s, remembered having a drink with Diana before she went to bed.

John Betjeman, the poet laureate, has written a poem for this morning: ‘Blackbirds in City churchyards hail the dawn/Charles and Diana on your wedding morn … And all of those assembled there/ Are joyful in the love you share.’.

Pictured: Lady Diana Spencer, her bridesmaids and the Queen.

Diana is wearing a signet ring engraved with the Prince of Wales feathers Charles gave her the previous day, with a card saying: ‘I’m so proud of you and when you come up I’ll be there at the altar for you tomorrow.

The Queen Mother comes into Diana’s bedroom: ‘My dear, you look enchanting!’ she says.

Charles and Diana have been involved in the guest list.

Prince Charles, in the uniform of a Royal Navy Commander, and his ‘supporter’ Prince Andrew (Royals don’t have a best man) leave Buckingham Palace in the State Landau.

The Queen and Prince Philip are met on the steps of St Paul’s by the Lord Mayor.

The Queen has paid for the entire wedding, including £12,500 to shut the cathedral for three days.

Prince Charles arrives and greets the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie.

The Archbishop has had new silver vestments made specially for the service, but confessed to Mrs Thatcher a few days earlier that they made him look like something out of Star Wars.

‘I like you dressed in silver,’ Prince Charles reassures Runcie.

David Emanuel said Diana chose an ivory colour dress to flatter her English Rose complexion.

Pictured: Diana and Charles riding in a carriage after their wedding .

The dress is made of silk taffeta and antique lace that once belonged to Queen Mary.

Diana says to her father: ‘Are you all right!

Pictured: Charles and Diana leaving St Paul's Cathedral.

After a blessing from the Dean of St Paul’s, the Archbishop tells the couple: ‘If either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it.’ Prince Philip cheekily turns around and looks at the congregation.

When Charles and Diana both in turn say: ‘I will’, there is a great cheer from outside the Cathedral.

From the pulpit Archbishop Runcie begins his sermon in which he hints at his misgivings about the marriage: ‘This is the stuff of fairytales … those who are married live happily ever after the wedding day if they persevere in the real adventure, which is the royal task of creating each other and creating a more loving world.’ When Charles and Diana came to Lambeth Palace to discuss the wedding arrangements, the Archbishop’s chaplain Richard Chartres thought the Prince was ‘seriously depressed’.

Pictured: Prince Charles and Diana on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

The wedding service is over and bride and groom walk back down the aisle to the Pomp And Circumstance March No

Diana has insisted Camilla is not invited to the wedding breakfast

The newly married Prince and Princess of Wales leave St Paul’s and get into the State Landau to travel to Buckingham Palace

Prince Andrew says: ‘Go on, give her a kiss.’ Charles replies: ‘I’m not getting into that caper,’ but Andrew insists

Charles says to his bride, ‘Well, how about it?’ and Diana replies ‘Why ever not?’ They kiss full on the lips

The wedding photographs are being taken by the Queen’s cousin, Lord Lichfield

Prince Charles pulls faces to make Diana laugh

Diana and Charles (pictured) were taken to Waterloo Station in an open landau to take the Royal Train to Broadlands, just as the Queen and Prince Philip did on their wedding day

The wedding breakfast guests are being served quenelles of brill with lobster sauce, chicken breasts and strawberries and cream

The 5ft-high wedding cake took Royal Navy chefs two days to make; the ingredients include 150 eggs, which took half an hour to break, and so much fruit that four people spent six hours washing it

Just as the Queen and Prince Philip had done on their wedding day in 1947, the newlyweds are taken to Waterloo Station in an open landau to take the Royal Train to Broadlands, the former home of Lord Mountbatten

Charles wrote to a friend a few days after the wedding: ‘What an unbelievable day it was — that went far too quickly … a revelation to find the real heart and soul of the nation being exposed for a moment in good, old- fashioned, innocent enjoyment.’

The TV coverage of the wedding has finished

At Broadlands, the newlyweds are in the same suite the Queen and Prince Philip had for their first night together