Magic in the Daylight

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The party of parties before the wedding will be the Queen's ball at the palace, which has a guest list of 5,000. On the wedding evening, with the bride and groom safely off, the Queen just might drop in on Lady Elizabeth Shakerly's rout. Lady Elizabeth discovered that rout is an 18th century term for what lesser mortals might call a blast. "I don't dare do something with caviar and lobster because I can't afford it," the Lady explains. "I am having scrambled eggs and bacon from 7:30 on." She is dishing it up at the ballroom of Claridge's, a location that, unlike the menu, could not have been chosen for reasons of economy.

Possibly a couple of the pedestrians watching Lady Elizabeth's guests disembarking from their Rollses and Daimlers will have wandered into Mayfair courtesy of the special gold, blue and white all-day ticket that London Transport is providing for the wedding day. At a cost of $4, it represents the cheapest tour around. The most expensive seems to be the trip organized by Mrs. Ian Routledge, who, for a fee of $5,000 (exclusive of air fare), will ferry 70 presumptive American socialites from London's St. James' club to stately country homes, where they can hobnob with the elite and perhaps catch a little refracted glory from the wedding.

Celebration plans were a good deal less rarefied out in the country. The Oxfordshire village of Weston-on-the-Green (pop. 300) scheduled an evening barbecue, dancing and lots of games, including at least two that are not recognized by the International Olympic Committee: a pillow fight on a greased pole laid across a swimming pool, and an English variation on the ancient Greek discus throw, in which the hurled object is a rubber Wellington boot.

In Tetbury, Master Thomas Charles Wortley, 5, will entertain local celebrators by re-enacting the wedding with Miss Karen Diana Welch, 9. There will be a wedding cake and toasts to both brides and grooms. Members of the younger set are not quite so cagey with the press as their elders, however, and a friend of the couple confided that Master Wortley thinks Miss Welch "soppy"; Miss Welch, in return, considers her make-believe spouse "an awful brat."

While the Welly is hurled and the tots take the vows, Charles and Diana should have departed the palace breakfast and started, via British Rail, on the first stage of their honeymoon. They will spend their first two days as husband and wife at Broadlands, once the home of Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Ahead, after their two-week Mediterranean cruise aboard the Britannia, lie the more serious duties of government and the more exacting chores of their official life together.