The royals will be out in spades, but one particular person will not be in attendance at Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall's wedding: the bride's half-sister, Felicity Tonkin.
As the July 30 nuptials of Princess Anne's daughter and her rugby player fiance approach, the Daily Mail reports that Tonkin, Captain Mark Phillips' "love child," was not invited because she and Zara maintain no relationship.
Although Felicity and Zara were born only four years apart and both share a similar passion for horses (Felicity is a equine veterinarian), the two have never met. "Zara has never been in touch with her -- nobody has," Felicity's grandmother Dr. Shirley Tonkin told the Mail.
The Tonkins reside in New Zealand, where Felicity's mother Heather first met Captain Phillips in 1983. Felicity was born two years later after a repeat dalliance between the two, but she never had any relationship with her father. The Telegraph writes that Captain Phillip, who divorced Princess Anne in 1992, only provided financial support for Tonkin but was never in contact.
The Tonkins were therefore not invited to the royal nuptials and what's more -- they won't even be able to read about it in the tabloids: the Daily Mail previously claimed that Buckingham Palace thwarted Phillips' plans to sell wedding day photos to tabloid magazine Hello! for over $800,000.
The wedding is intended to be private and will be paid for out-of-pocket by the families and not by royal funds, reported the BBC News back in March.
But a "source close to the bride" told the Daily Mail, "[Zara] believes that because she is a private individual without a title, who does not 'sponge' off the public purse, she should be able to sell the rights to her wedding," especially when her older brother Peter Phillips did so for his 2008 nuptials.
Sounds like just the kind of drama Zara's grandmother Queen Elizabeth II would like to avoid.