Over the months, snippets of information about the wedding dress and the wedding cake and the wedding list (which includes a sugar sifter at 6,135 pounds and a hot water jug at 5000 pounds) and the guest list have appeared in the press. But unlike the ill-fated wedding of Charles and Diana, none of the bakers, butchers and candlestick makers involved in this royal wedding have been turned into instant celebrities themselves.

But, less than a week before the wedding, Sophie, a PR consultant, has made her first official public outing (sitting next to the Queen Mother for the Trooping of Colour) and has also, along with her royal fiance, given her first official interview to the BBC.

In the interview broadcast tonight aspart of the BBC's build-up to the royal wedding on June 19, Sophie told the interviewer, Sue Barker, about her relationship with the royal family and described the first time she met her future in-laws. She said: ``I wouldn't say it was difficult but it was slightly more scary than it might have been.'' Prince Edward, she said, told her before she met them: ``Don't worry, they're not that scary. They won't bite!''

Sophie has often been compared to Princess Diana. Apart from their both being blonde, it is the contrasts between the two women that stand out. Sophie is a professional woman, from a middle class background, who met her fiancee as millions of working women meet their future husbands -- at work.

Diana on the other hand was cherry-picked from a list of aristocratic virgins to wed a man she barely knew and who was more than 10 years older than her. Sophie has also continued to work and will keep her job after the wedding. Diana quit her job as a nursery teacher long before her engagement to thePrince was officially announced.

All of this and the fact that she has had six years in which to deal with becoming a member of the royal family appear to indicate that her marriage, despite the best efforts of the tabloid press, will last longer than Diana's. She says in the interview: ``I was fully aware of what family Edward belonged to and therefore if I had any reservations about the potential situation I could have found myself in, then I would have got out of it a long time ago.