Palace Launches Official Website for Royal Wedding

St. James’s Palace launched Wednesday an official hub for the forthcoming wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

As anticipation builds for the event, which is scheduled to occur on April 29 at Westminister Abbey, visitors can get their royal fix via a stream of news, pictures and videos at officialroyalwedding2011.org. People are also invited to follow updates via Twitter, YouTube, Facebook (launched in November) and Flickr. New content from those properties is included in a right-hand sidebar.

The first details about Kate Middleton’s wedding dress will be posted on the site, a spokesperson for St. James’s Palace wrote. It might even live stream a broadcast of the big day.

The site was built by Accenture, with creative input from the Reading Room. Google’s App Engine is hosting the site, chosen for its ability “to handle large, global peaks in web traffic,” a spokesperson explained.

Whether you’re enchanted or repulsed by the hype surrounding the Royal Wedding, we can at least applaud the British Monarchy’s progressive use of social media to keep the world abreast of one of 2011′s most highly anticipated events. Clarence House originally announced the engagement on Twitter in November, and again used the service to name the maid of honor, best man, bridesmaids and page boy.