No invite for May, Trump and Obama to royal wedding

Prime Minister Theresa May has not been invited to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on May 19, a government source said yesterday.The wedding guests will be people who have an existing direct relationship with one or both of the couple, a royal source said.An official spokesman for Prince Harry said: “It has been decided that an official list of political leaders — both UK and international — is not required for Prince Harry and Meghan’s wedding. The government was consulted on this decision, which was taken by the royal household.”The government source said the wedding venue, St George’s Chapel in Windsor, was significantly smaller than Westminster Abbey where Harry’s older brother Prince William wed Kate Middleton in 2011 in the presence of numerous heads of government.The source said there had been no expectation from Downing Street, May’s office, that the prime minister would be invited.It has also been confirmed that Barack and Michelle Obama, who are friends of Harry, have not been invited.Earlier a White House official confirmed neither Trump nor first lady Melania were invited.Among the 600 guests who will be attending the ceremony at St George’s Chapel in Windsor on May 19, will be a 12-year-old girl injured in the Manchester Arena attack.Amelia Thompson, from Dronfield Woodhouse, near Sheffield, was left traumatised after witnessing the bomb blow up after the Ariana Grande concert in May 2017. She also damaged her vocal chords from screaming in horror.Meanwhile a new biography of Meghan details her lifelong embrace of good causes but also points to a calculating streak and claims she has her heart set on becoming “Diana 2.0”.She is fiercely protective of “Brand Meghan” and sidelines people as she moves ahead in life, according to people who know her cited in the book.Meghan: A Hollywood Princess, which is due out in Britain tomorrow, details how the 36-year-old Suits star ditched her first husband in a way that also cost her a lifelong friend.The biography was authored by Andrew Morton, the British royal writer who penned the blockbuster Diana: Her True Story, with the late princess’s covert assistance.Morton also details her fascination with Harry’s mother Diana around the time of her death in 1997, watching her funeral in tears and old tapes of her marriage to Prince Charles.Family friends said she was intrigued by Diana “not just for her style but for her independent humanitarian mission, seeing her as a role model”. Her childhood friend Ninaki Priddy is cited as saying: “She was always fascinated by the royal family. She wants to be princess Diana 2.0.”Morton says comparisons with Diana are inevitable, given her humanitarian work and glamorous appeal.However, he notes the crucial distinction between the timid Diana, who married Charles aged 20, and the 36-year-old Hollywood professional. “In some ways, the groomed and camera-ready Markle was the woman Diana always strove to become,” he wrote.The book also claims that as she finally found success as an actress, Markle shed her old acquaintances — including her film producer husband Trevor Engelson, who helped her get on the acting ladder with early parts.“Her friends in Los Angeles noticed the change in her now that she was on the way up,” Morton wrote. “She no longer had the time for friends she had known for years.“A networker to her fingertips, she seemed to be carefully recalibrating her life, forging new friendships with those who could burnish and develop her career.”Markle had been with Engelson since 2004 and they married in Jamaica in 2011.Shortly after their engagement, she landed her signature role as Rachel Zane in the US legal drama television series Suits. Filmed in Toronto, their relationship became long-distance as she became a star. The marriage collapsed in 2013.“Trevor went from cherishing Meghan to, as one friend observed, ‘feeling like he was a piece of something stuck to the bottom of her shoe’,” it reads.Another friend said the decision to end the marriage was made by Markle and another that she sent her rings back in the post.Markle’s parents split when she was two and divorced five years later. She went to a private school and was remembered for her strong sense of right and wrong.