She's moved to London, embraced a life of relentless media scrutiny and converted from Catholicism to the Church of England to maintain her fianc ©'s theoretical eligibility for his grandmother's throne.
But Autumn Kelly, the 30-year-old Montrealer who is poised to marry Peter Phillips -- Queen Elizabeth's eldest grandchild -- in a ceremony at Windsor Castle this weekend, isn't giving up her Canadian citizenship or her career plans to join the Royal Family, she has revealed in a controversial magazine interview.
Peter Phillips and his fiancée, Canadian Autumn Kelly, discuss their upcoming wedding in Hello! magazine.
And although, according to a federal Heritage spokesman, the Canadian government will have "no involvement" in Saturday's royal wedding at historic St. George's Chapel, monarchists from coast to coast will be celebrating anyway as they mark the beginning of a "unique" new bond between this country and the Crown.
"We're excited," says Robert Finch, dominion chairman of the Monarchist League of Canada. "A Canadian gal is marrying into the Royal Family, and that gives us an excellent opportunity to talk about the monarchy. Everything is grand."
Kelly and Phillips, who is also 30, collected a purported $1 million from glossy, gossipy Hello! magazine for an exclusive pre-wedding photo shoot and interview at the groom's luxury "cottage" in Gloucestershire, on the rural estate owned by his father, Mark Phillips, ex-husband of Princess Anne.
Various unnamed courtiers have told British royal watchers the magazine deal caused some annoyance at Buckingham Palace -- and may have contributed to Prince William and girlfriend Kate Middleton's decision to miss the wedding, citing other obligations.
Kelly and Phillips' lucrative chat with Hello! has supplied some candid comments about their courtship -- which began with a chance meeting at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal in 2003 -- the wedding and their plans for the future.
Among the revelations was Kelly's startling claim she had been dating Phillips for about six weeks before even realizing he was the Queen's grandson, now 11th in line to the throne.
Phillips, Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth's first grandchild, was born in 1977 amid the Silver Jubilee celebrations marking the Queen's 25th year on the throne. Princess Anne, now officially styled the Princess Royal, later divorced Phillips' father, initiating a lengthy era of marital strife in the Royal Family.
Both Phillips and Kelly -- whose mother, Kitty, and father, Brian, divorced when she was 8 -- told Hello! their experience of broken marriages has stiffened their resolve to make their own union "be forever."
Phillips also disclosed how a rainstorm scuttled his plans to propose to Kelly during a hot-air balloon ride last July.
"I set the whole thing up, with champagne, and thought that if Autumn said, 'No,' I could throw her out of the basket," he joked.
Instead, Phillips popped the question while the two were walking their dog in a downpour.
The couple's relationship -- first reported in Canada in September 2005 -- had until the Hello! splash been a relatively low-key affair, unlike the media frenzy that surrounds Phillips' first cousins, Prince William and Prince Harry, and their love lives.
Kelly, who was working at a Grand Prix hospitality suite when she met Phillips, now works in London as an assistant to British media personality Sir Michael Parkinson.
Phillips manages auto racing sponsorships for the Royal Bank of Scotland.
-- Canwest News Service
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