Zara Phillips ties the knot with 'The Fridge' Mike Tindall

Zara Phillips, Prince William's cousin who is 13th in line to the throne, and Mike Tindall, captain of England's rugby team, were married on a glorious, sunny day in historic Edinburgh Saturday.


The 3 p.m. ceremony took place at Canongate Kirk, a small Church of Scotland venue where the Queen worships when she stays in Edinburgh. The modest church dates back to 1688.


The bride made her arrival at a fashionably late six minutes past the hour in an ivory silk and duchess satin gown by Stewart Parvin – the personal couturier to the Queen – and a silk tulle cathedral veil. She carried a huge bouquet of cream-colored flowers and accessorized with Jimmy Choo shoes and a tiara on loan from Princess Anne. Tindall wore a suit adorned with coattails and a light grey stripe on the trouser legs.


Mike Tindall OBE, 33, is a Yorkshire lad, educated at a grammar school in Wakefield.
His parents — Philip, 64, a retired bank official, and Linda, 63, a social worker — are resolutely middle class.
Philip, who has since been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, didn’t enjoy retirement and he went back to work part-time in the finance department of Newhall Prison, near Wakefield.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Philip meets Philip and Linda meets Liz at the wedding reception.
Their son, Mike, once sold fish and chips from a van — which he hated, describing it as ‘just a lot of rowdy northerners complaining about the size of the fish’ — and is now captain of the England rugby union team.
A man of many nicknames, most of which revolve around his size, he is known as ‘the Fridge’, ‘the Lord’ and ‘Tins’. But don’t judge him by his appearance — off the pitch he describes himself as a ‘mummy’s boy’.
Given that his father and five uncles played rugby before him, it was natural young Mike’s future lay on the pitch.
When Mike was five, the seatbelt came loose on a dodgem car and he head-butted the steering wheel, breaking his nose.
He’s since broken it eight more times and doesn’t want to do anything else to it, since the last repair job collapsed in the middle of a game and metal plates fell on the pitch.
His future mother-in-law — who has a particularly imperious conk — suggested a nose job before the wedding.
He refused, saying: ‘It’s now part of me.’


Prince Harry introduced Mike and Zara in a Sydney bar during the 2003 rugby World Cup. Zara was on her gap year.
Rather ungallantly, Mike revealed that Zara had insisted a friend passed her phone number to him, saying: ‘She wants you to text her.’
The following year she asked him to the North Cotswold Ball as ‘mates’. Still, it worked. Would you say no to Princess Anne’s daughter?


Zara's cousin William may have flown Kate to the slopes of Mount Kenya, but Wakefield Mike was a little more laidback. He came downstairs one Saturday night while Zara was glued to The X-Men on the telly. ‘She was on the sofa, which helped,’ he told an interviewer.
Then he bent down, no easy feat for a man of his bulk, and popped the question. She laughed; luckily, she said yes.
No controversial Mummy’s ring is being recycled here: Mike had a brand new, though bespoke, diamond job waiting. There is no evidence of a matching tongue stud.