Wedding day dawns for Prince William and Kate

London (CNN) -- Prince William, the second in line to the British throne, arrived at Westminster Abbey Friday morning to marry his college sweetheart Kate Middleton in a royal wedding that has brought London and much of the world to a raucous, flag-waving halt.

They will be known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge after their marriage, the royal family announced shortly before the wedding -- thus avoiding giving the newest member of the royal family any title that would implicitly compare her to Diana, Princess of Wales.

William wore the uniform of a colonel of the Irish Guards, a scarlet jacket and blue sash, as his brother, Prince Harry, accompanied him into the abbey.

Crowds cheered as his car drove the short distance from Clarence House to the abbey.

The most devoted monarchists arrived days before the event and camped out with Union Jacks on their clothes, tents and faces. Some traveled from as far away as Colombia.

Up to half a million people who didn't get one of the 1,900 invitations to Westminster Abbey are expected to watch the event on giant screens at Hyde Park in central London.

Kings, queens, priests and politicians began to arrive at the abbey shortly after 8 a.m., with celebrities such as Sir Elton John and Olympic gold medallist Ian Thorpe among them.

David Beckham arrived with his wife Victoria, with the soccer star sporting his OBE medal on the right lapel of his morning coat. Medals are traditionally worn on the left.

A grim weather report improved slightly on Friday morning, with forecasters backing off their prediction of rain and even suggesting some sun might break through the clouds in time for William and Kate to kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace as RAF jets fly past for the culmination of the day's festivities.

Street parties are being held across the United Kingdom, while protests are threatened by Muslim radicals, anarchists and anti-royalists.

About 5,000 police officers are out on the streets, including 110 on horseback and 35 with sniffer dogs -- but the world's media have deployed even more resources, with at least 8,000 staff working in London for the event.

British Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has predicted the ceremony will be seen by an estimated 2 billion people worldwide.

But the British themselves are lukewarm about the event, with just under half saying they were planning to watch it on television, and 56% saying they were not interested.

William announced his engagement to Middleton in November after proposing secretly in a rustic cabin in Kenya in October.

He's the older son of Prince Charles and the late Diana, princess of Wales; a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II; a military search-and-rescue helicopter pilot and, by one recent measure, the most popular member of the royal family.

She's an art history graduate and the eldest child of self-made millionaires who run a party-supplies company.

They met as college students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, sharing an apartment with a circle of friends before they began dating. She first caught his eye when she modelled in a student fashion show wearing a see-through dress over her underwear, British reports have said -- though there's no chance she'll wear anything similar when her much-anticipated wedding dress, the last major secret element of the wedding, is finally revealed.

The couple will be married in front of nearly 2,000 guests at Westminster Abbey, where British monarchs are crowned, sometimes married, and often buried, alongside major figures from British history including Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Isaac Newton and George Frederic Handel.

The guests also include "Mr. Bean" actor Rowan Atkinson, a personal friend of Prince Charles. Singer Joss Stone will be there, as is former British Prime Minister John Major.

But the guest list is as notable for who isn't on it as who is. Former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have not been invited, leading to accusations that the royal family favors the Conservative party over Labour. 

Buckingham Palace responded that Major was invited not because he was a Tory, but because he was appointed guardian of Prince William and his younger brother Prince Harry when their mother Diana died in a car crash in 1997.

Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative and the other living former prime minister, declined the invitation. She failed to appear at a Downing Street event in her honor last year because of ill health.

United States President Barack Obama also wasn't invited, raising some eyebrows. The royal family explained that as a matter of protocol, presidents were not invited. The U.S. Ambassador to London is on the guest list, as are most members of London's diplomatic corps.

But Syria's ambassador was uninvited just a day before the wedding in light of his government's current crackdown on protesters. The Crown Prince of Bahrain, whose country is also clamping down on demonstrations, was invited but on Sunday decided not to attend.

The controversies and the couple aside, the wedding looks set to be a very traditional British event in some respects.

It will include the Lord's Prayer, hymns and Bible readings typical of English nuptials, and the always nervous moment when the priest asks that if anyone present knows of a lawful impediment to the marriage, he speak now or "hereafter forever hold his peace."

Of course, the priest asking that question Friday will be Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the titular head of the worldwide Anglican church.

And while it's not unheard of for British weddings to include a singing of "God Save the Queen," this one will be unusual in that the monarch in question will actually be standing in the front row for it.

William will give Middleton a ring of Welsh gold, but she won't return the favour -- and she will not, in her vows, promise to obey him. They will exchange identical vows to love, comfort, honor and keep each other.

Of course, if William does some day become king, Middleton will then presumably have to obey him.

A ComRes poll for CNN when the engagement was announced in November found that just over half of British adults thought William would make a better king than his father Prince Charles, heir to the throne; 58 percent said Middleton would make a better queen than Charles's second wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.

But the online poll's 2,015 respondents were split on the largely theoretical question of whether the crown should actually skip a generation and pass directly to William when his grandmother Queen Elizabeth dies. Forty-five percent said it should, while 41 percent said it should not.

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