THE country’s first bout of Royal Wedding Fever happened long before the 1981 marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

On Wednesday, November 14, 1973, Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips at Westminster Abbey, becoming the first of the Queen’s four children to tie the knot.

There was a barrage of newspaper stories in the months prior to the ceremony, which drew half a billion TV viewers across the globe.

Nine days before the ceremony, the Adver gave away a free 16-page pullout to mark the occasion. Called Royal Wedding Preview, it was flagged as a special colour souvenir.

Admittedly only four of the 16 pages were in colour, but moving beyond black and white photos was an expensive and time-consuming business 42 years ago, involving special printing plates and specialist alterations to machinery.

The front page had a colour image of the happy couple, with Captain Phillips in his Queen’s Dragoon Guards uniform, while the back page pictured the couple and their both sets of parents.

There were more colour pictures across the centre pages.

Inside were articles covering everything from the couple’s mutual love of horses to the making of the wedding cake.

The icing of the latter, we revealed, was done by a Mr Stanley West, the 57-year-old head of the baking section at Ealing Technical College’s School of Hotel-Keeping and Catering.

He said: “Apart from Princess Anne’s Royal coat of arms, the cake is decorated with regimental badges and designs representing the couple’s interests such as horse riding.”

Ever on the lookout for an even slightly local angle, we were sure to remind readers that the farming and horse-loving Phillips family lived in the Wiltshire village of Great Somerford.

The groom’s mother said: “There are other things besides horses, but there are worse things to spend your money on.”

Businesses who bought advertising space in the pullout included Debenhams in the town centre and the Co-op Reproduction Furniture Showrooms, whose premises at 118 Victoria Road are now occupied by a Sue Ryder Care charity shop.