DALLAS, Apr 9, 2005/ FW/ --- They met when they were in their 20s, both got married, but to different persons, and today, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles finally said ‘I do’ after 35 years of an ill-fated, sometimes tumultuous yet everlasting love affair.

The story is an NC-17 fairy tale, a material that award-winning scriptwriters in Hollywood would love to get their hands on. But, this happened in real life, very public life at that.

It has all the right elements – a beautiful Princess, beloved by many who married the heir to the throne; then a loving woman married to a respectable and upstanding husband. And of course, the children – with two of them heirs to the throne also.

There was the nasty divorce and tragedy, with the Princess’ tragic death. Ah, if we were not talking of the British royals here, a mini-series would have been made, which, by the way was actually made!

But the story was not finished yet, and although the Prince of Wales married the Duchess of Cornwall (the title that Camilla will take in deference to Princess Diana’s title) today, it is still another chapter of their love story.

It was a beautiful wedding, though without the pomp and pageantry of the 1981 wedding between Charles and Diana. It was held at Windsor’s Guildenhall or town hall, a civil ceremony wherein Prince William and Camilla’s son Tom stood as witnesses, that according to reports have fewer than 50 guests.

According to historians, this royal wedding set a string of historical precedents -- Charles was the first potential British king to marry a divorcee and also the first royal to marry outside a church.

But, that does not matter at this point in time, as true love prevailed, something that the 800 guests during the blessing ceremony conducted by Archbishop Rowan Williams saw first hand, and hundreds of thousands who watched the live broadcast on television also witnessed.

Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, together with UK’s Prime Minister Tony Blair and Camilla’s ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles attended.

Prince Charles was very tender to the Duchess of Cornwall who wore a Robinson Valentine of cream silk topped with a matching coat for the civil ceremony.

The outfit, crowned with a stylish and intensely feminine straw hat overlaid with ivory French lace and trimmed with a fountain of feathers.

For the blessing ceremony at St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, the duchess changed into another Robinson Valentine design, a long, fitted silk porcelain-blue dress and high-collared coat embroidered with gold thread, with a slight train

On her head, the duchess wore a feather headdress covered in gold leaf and tipped with crystals designed by Irish-born milliner Philip Treacy.

For more information about the royal wedding and the Prince of Wales, please log on: www.princeofwales.gov.uk