KATE Middleton came down the aisle of Westminster Abbey and one thing was abundantly clear – William is lucky to have her.

And so are we.

Kate came down the aisle and walked right into history. She came down the aisle – a radiant, elegant vision of beauty – incredibly slowly, as though she had waited for this day a long time, and now somebody else could do the waiting.

And the entire world was waiting. Nearly 2,000 of us inside Westminster Abbey, and another two billion watching on television.

From inside the Abbey, the roar of the crowd was a distant sigh, but never could you doubt that this was the wedding of the century.

And yet, inside the Abbey, it felt like a curiously intimate affair. The cool grey stones of Westminster Abbey were softened by the line of maple trees that had been imported for the day, and in the congregation – while peppered with titled heads and famous faces – you got a sense of the lives of the bride and groom.

There were many guests in the uniform of the army, navy and air force.

Two of them were waiting for Kate at the High Altar. Both Harry and William had arrived wearing peaked caps, and Harry spent the entire proceedings fretting with his unruly mop, as though concerned with hat hair.

William – calmer, more at ease than his brother – was dashing in the bright red tunic of the Irish Guards. There were members of the RAF, in which he currently serves as a search-and-rescue pilot, who were said the be disappointed he did not wear his RAF uniform.

But it is hard to see how he could have improved on the red coat he wore. He looked as though he was ready to fight at Waterloo.

And it was only with the arrival of Kate that William seemed to lose his control, and become almost bashful with love. She looked stunning and he told her so. Harry grinned with admiration.

And here she was taking her place in history. It was easy to imagine her in 10 years time, in 20 years, in 30. You could picture her as a mother and a grandmother and a queen. She already looked like a princess.

But this did not feel like a fairy tale. It could have felt that way, with the bride in her white dream of a dress, and William looking like Prince Charming all ready for the ball. Despite all the grandeur and majestic ritual, the wedding of Prince William with Catherine Middleton was no fairy tale. This day had the power of a true story.

You felt it when they joined hands for the wedding ceremony.

A fairy tale? No – this was a man and a woman who have loved each other for a long time. Who met when they were young and went their separate ways and then found their way back to each other. A man and a woman who were planning to spend their lives together. This was no fairy tale – this was the real thing.

Kate seemed to feel it as they exchanged vows – the enormity of the moment, which must have seemed like a moment that might have never happened.

This was really happening. What was at stake did not feel as though it could evaporate into thin air.

All the ritual of grand state ceremony in a 900-year-old church could not disguise what we were seeing – the union of two people who are deeply in love.

No royal wedding would be complete without an unscripted royal cock-up and this one’s came when William came to put on Kate’s wedding ring – and for one heart-stopping moment, it seemed it would not fit.

Brute force and the power of love ensured that it did in the end. I suspect it looked worse on TV than it did from where I was sitting in the Abbey. But one thing is for certain. William and Kate will laugh about that moment for years.

Then they were suddenly man and wife, and apart from the happiness that you felt for two decent young people who were clearly in love, it was impossible not to feel a surge of national pride.

What other country could do this? Their monarchies are either consigned to the wheelie bins of history or so self-effacing that nobody cares.

Even Hollywood’s biggest stars can’t compete. Royalty is the original celebrity. And on a celebrity-obsessed planet, the original is still the best. Kate and William make Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt look dowdy by comparison.

The tension and the pressure was unimaginable. All through her arrival and the wedding vows, Kate was a picture of calm – the beautiful, serene centre in the eye of the hurricane.

BUT when she was no longer centre stage, and her brother was reading The Lesson, the mask slipped. She seemed edgy, restless, wound up.

Perhaps it was not tension but the release of tension. I don’t even know if the cameras caught it. But William certainly did. And he caught her eye, and he smiled with a love that knows no limits, and immediately she was calm again.

People spoke of Diana. People spoke of Diana more than they had for years. They remembered her wedding to Charles, almost 30 years ago. And I could never forget her funeral, 14 years ago, when William was 15 years old.

That was the last time I was in Westminster Abbey and, of all the memories of that day, they are all dwarfed by the heart-wrenching memory of two young boys who had suddenly lost their mum.

It was another reason why Kate and William’s wedding had such power. For those of us old enough to remember the sight of two devastated children standing by their mother’s coffin, yesterday felt like a happy ending to a story that has had its share of tragedy.

AND we remembered Diana because Kate is so clearly a star, and so obviously stepping into the same glaring spotlight that finally consumed Diana. But they are very different women.

Diana was just about in her 20s when she wed Charles, her far older groom. Kate and William are the same age and she will be 30 in January.

Diana was a girl. Kate is a woman. And when things go a bit wrong – like a ring that doesn’t quite fit – William is the half of the couple who is prone to blushing.

Kate is just a few months older than William, but she sometimes seems much older than him.

But we remembered Diana today, and we spoke of her, and she was in our hearts again. Every one of us felt the presence of Princess Diana in Westminster.

Perhaps it was just a collective memory, or perhaps it was something else. Yet her spirit was there, real or imagined.

But if Diana was watching, then she was smiling. And now, at last, she was surely at peace.

The bride’s Alexander McQueen dress was said to combine traditions that were both ancient and modern, and surely the wedding ceremony did that.

The union of Kate and William represented both the way we were, and the way we are.

We were in a church that is almost 1,000 years old. But we were there to watch the marriage of a man and a woman who met at university, and who have lived together before marriage.

KATE and William are a young couple who do not look so very different to thousands of young couples in our country.

Yes, he is the future king of England and she is the next global superstar, style icon and figure of obsession. But at the centre of it all was a bride and groom, grinning at each other and looking like their greatest dream had just come true.

The ceremony, the day, the couple – it was all both ancient and modern. Life as a royal will change Kate Middleton – whose name seems designed to reflect some mythical national heartland – but she will change them too.

She already has. That is how the monarchy survives, and why it lasts – because it is always wise enough to adapt to changing times.

And this marriage will last. They are a good fit. And they are a great match for these times. Not just because she is the first royal bride to go to university, or because she has a slim, shining celebrity glamour about her.

But because she and William are so clearly in love.

There was a real intimacy to their wedding.

It seems odd that you can have an intimate occasion watched by a sizeable proportion of the world’s population. But the warmth and intimacy was generated by the happy couple.

Here, was a man and woman, you felt, who knew each other well. When the man made those promises – to love and honour, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, until death us do part – they sounded like they meant something. And it was deeply moving.

From where I was sitting, it looked like William and Kate had just rescued the institution of marriage.

There is an ease and familiarity and affection between them.

There was romance to the day – but it wasn’t a giddy, callow, shallow thing.

It was real romance, the stuff of true red-blooded love between a man and a woman. They looked like they were born to be together.

And I thought – this is why it lasts.

This is why the whole glorious circus of monarchy goes on and on, century after century, while the republicans just seem ever more bad-tempered and feeble.

The royal family lasts because it is smart enough to know when to modernise.

In class terms, what we were watching was momentous stuff – for centuries, British kings and queens have married into foreign royal or domestic aristocracy.

Many said that Diana – daughter of the eighth Earl Spencer – was far posher than Prince Charles.

But Kate is one of us. It would be stretching it to say that she looked ordinary – radiant as any Oscar-winning actress as she stood at the High Altar, she looked as though there was nothing remotely ordinary about her.

But she is emphatically a woman from an ordinary background, whose ancestors from her mother’s side mined coal from the reign of Queen Victoria to the Second World War.

It is true the Middletons have money, but it is money so new that the ink on the notes is still wet.

You would need a PhD in snobbery to hate Kate Middleton – as we can no longer call her.

Diana was a great leap forward for the monarchy – with her good causes, with her instinctive handling of modern celebrity life – and Kate will be too, albeit in her own more quiet and diffident way.

The marriage of William and Kate was a groundbreaking, historic event. This was the first time in almost 400 years that a future monarch has not stuck with toffs, tiaras and titles.

But by marrying for love, Kate and William instantly rebranded and rebooted the British monarchy and ensured its survival for at least another 100 years.

Unlike so may other royal weddings, it did not feel as though the duty to produce an heir and a spare comes into it. William married the girl he was crazy about, and good for him.

But even our future king – so tall, so dashing, so right to go with the red of the Irish Guards – had a supporting role on this special day.

Again and again, your eyes were drawn to Kate. In this respect, it was like every other wedding – the day belonged to the bride.

At 29, she seemed ready for the role that history – and her heart – had thrust upon her. When she came back down the aisle on the arm of her husband, she was totally relaxed and smiling broadly now. And so was everyone else. Some said that she was a commoner when she entered Westminster Abbey and a princess when she left it.

But in truth a woman like Kate is always a class act. They stood in the great doorway of Westminster Abbey. Now you could hear the roar of the crowd outside – for the nation’s new sweetheart and her handsome prince.

Kate and William are true stars, and they have that combination of availability and distance that true stardom requires. The attention they are bound to receive will be unimaginable.

Perhaps history will see that she is more suited to her new role than him.

But to me they looked like a couple who will grow old together, and who will never stop loving each other.

THE bride and groom stepped out into a world and a country where times are tough. A royal wedding in an age of austerity will inevitably rub some people up the wrong way. But it was impossible not to feel moved by this day, and to be happy for them and to wish them well.

The monarchy survives on the will of the British people.

If ever we decided that we would get along rather well without them, they would go quietly, and probably with a mumbled apology.

But I don’t think we will be saying goodbye for a while. Not after today. Not in our lifetimes.

Ditch them and our head of state would be a middle-aged white man in a suit and tie who probably went to one of a handful of public schools.

But that all seemed academic. The royal family represent an older power than the one given for a short while to our elected representatives in Westminster.

An older power, and a deeper magic, and a better story for our island nation – because more than any politicians, they represent how this nation sees itself.

Despite all the pleasures of privilege and the pains of duty that William and Kate will know, their story is our story.

Despite the palaces and the footmen and all the rest, we believe we know – and we are right. They reflect the people we are. That is why it moves us so. Ultimately, we share the same values as this young couple. And we choose love.

When it was nearly all over I caught sight of a yellow hat sitting on the head of a elderly lady.

And I thought how my mum would have been around the same age, and would certainly wear the same kind of hat – both showy yet sensible – to a wedding. It took me a moment to realise that the nice old lady was the Queen.

She was smiling to herself and looking well pleased with how the day’s proceedings had gone.