No royal wedding for Harry Windsor

10.10.06: FORMER PRINCE HARRY today underscored his determination to remain outside public life when, at the tender age of 22, he married 26-year-old Sarah Bocking at Brighton register office.

The bride is a direct marketing executive and the sister of Tom Bocking, Harry Windsor's best friend and fellow-student at Cirencester Agricultural College.

Her parents, Sheilagh and Richard Bocking, live outside Haslemere, in Surrey, where her father farms and her mother runs a small publishing company.

Four years ago, the ex-prince shocked the world when he announced on his 18th birthday that he wished to renounce his place in the succession and be known simply as Harry Spencer Windsor.

He also triggered a political crisis when the Act of Renunciation was opposed in the House of Lords by Lord Cranbourne, the former leader of the Tory peers.

The groom wore a grey two-piece suit and his bride an A-line costume in this season's acid pink. Tom Bocking was best man. The only members of the royal family to attend were the Prince of Wales and Prince William, on leave from the Anglo Navy. Other guests were members of the bride's family, students from Cirencester and the bride's colleagues. The couple kept their marriage well out of the public eye and no pictures, official or otherwise, have been released.

The honeymoon in Bermuda will last only a week because of Windsor's final exams. After graduation, Windsor said, he was looking forward to helping his father-in-law run the family farm.

Tom Bocking said Harry had been eager to settle his personal life before next year's 10th anniversary of his mother's death in the infamous Paris car crash. DRS