Meghan\u2019s mother Diana Ragland was a hot favorite at 1\/5 (representing an 80 percent chance), while President Donald Trump was bringing up the rear at 5,000\/1.<\/p>\n
But all the smart money was on Prince Charles, who stepped in gallantly to deliver his impending daughter-in-law to her future prince. You could have bagged that eventuality at 8\/1 and it all seems so obvious now, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
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By far the biggest market of all, according to Jones, was on the designer of Markle\u2019s dress. Bookies said they had to suspend markets on Ralph & Russo, due to a suspicious volume of late bets, prompting fears that a butler may have spilled the beans.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\nIt proved to be a red herring, and \u201cyou shoulda had your money on the Givenchy,\u201d was an oft-heard mutter uttered by grumpy old men in the bookmaker shops of Merry Old England, followed by a sharp ripping of betting slips.<\/p>\n
TV commentators “ooohed” and “aaaaaahed” over the gown’s simple yet classic lines, and sequin manufacturers everywhere wept even more than the grouchy losers.<\/p>\n
There wasn’t so much as a seed pearl to be found anywhere on the\u00a0\u201cexclusive double-bonded silk cady,\u201d as described later by a Kensington Palace spokesperson, and regal wedding gown knockoffs are big, big business in the replica bridal market.<\/p>\n
Indulging the Royal Beard<\/strong><\/h2>\nAnd now, for something completely different: Harry\u2019s ginger beard.<\/p>\n
Apparently, a beard is a no-no for servicemen or ex-servicemen sporting army gear. Who knew? Well, maybe a bunch of budding sharpies, who had their money on Harry to shave, based on this insider knowledge.<\/p>\n
But Harry reportedly got special permission from his grandmother, HRH Queen Elizabeth, to keep the beard and — as top dog in the firm — she can do that. At 92, the queen now seems rather\u00a0blas\u00e9 about it all, and the woman who once forbade her own sister from marrying a divorced man for love is now just going with the flow.<\/p>\n
You could have had Harry to shave his beard at 5\/6, or to keep that ginger scruff, also 5\/6, which demonstrates perfectly how the bookies cleaned up even more than those people selling Union Jacks and wedding memorial mugs plastered with the good-looking couple’s countenances.<\/strong><\/p>\nMost viewers considered the day an unorthodox win for the British royal family, whose previously stuffy image is now more deconstructed than the diamond count in the newly coined Duchess of Sussex’s dazzling wedding tiara. Which you can bet had as much security watching it as the royal couple themselves.<\/p>\n
After all, diamonds are forever. Royals come and go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Of all the wacky royal wedding lines offered by UK bookmakers, one that didn\u2019t come in — to the delight of an estimated two billion global viewers — was that the now-Duchess of Sussex,\u00a0n\u00e9e\u00a0Meghan Markle, wouldn’t even show up. At 1,000\/1 — from a cold-blooded gambler\u2019s perceptive — it was actually a really good bet. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":78271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3313,19853],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Royal Wedding: Odds, Oddities, and Novelty Bets That Paid Off<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n