Ms. Hicks, one of Diana’s five bridesmaids and a goddaughter to Prince Charles, has gradually emerged, with no apologies, in the role of royal-wedding expert. At Diana’s 1981 wedding, Ms. Hicks was a 13-year-old tomboy, reluctantly decked in petticoats and puffed sleeves. Now 43 and the mother of three sons and a daughter (she describes herself as a “ferociously organized”), she will clip on a microphone and play commentator for the much-anticipated April 29 nuptials of Diana’s firstborn, Prince William, and Kate Middleton.

It’s a role that Ms. Hicks’s mother, Pamela Hicks, a daughter of Countess Mountbatten of Burma and the last Viceroy of India and herself a bridesmaid to Queen Elizabeth, has perhaps surprisingly encouraged.

“My mother reminds me, ‘You are a part of history,’ ” said Ms. Hicks, taking a seat in the Mark’s dining room and ordering a cup of English Breakfast tea and a bowl of oatmeal. “It’s only 30 years later that you think, I rode in a gilt carriage drawn by horses.”

Bridesmaid at Diana’s Wedding Will Report on Kate’s – NYTimes.com