Google Celebrates the Royal Wedding with a Doodle and Other Surprises

With the whole of Britain catching the royal wedding fever, there's no surprise that Google is joining the party and is offering several ways for people to take part in the celebrations. Its Google.co.uk homepage has a royal wedding-dedicated doodle, a fairytale wedding at that, and Google is also live streaming the entire procession on YouTube.

This of course on top of the guided tour in Google Earth and Maps and the small surprise in Street View.

Visitors to the UK homepage of Google search will notice the custom logo celebrating the occasion. It depicts Westminster Abbey and its surroundings, along with the royal carriage whisking the couple away off to a castle in the distance.

The colorful doodle certainly creates a fairytale atmosphere, to go with the whole royal theme, though it's probably not a very accurate description of the actual ceremony taking place today.

If the doodle is enough to wet your appetite or spark your curiosity about the rare event, you can head on over to the YouTube Royal Channel which has been showing a stream of ceremonies and processions.

There are also wedding highlights, clips of the most important events so far and more videos will be added later once they're edited. The entire stream will also be available for replay on the same page eventually.

YouTube is hardly the only place to show video footage from the event, it will be hard to avoid with all the media attention and the thousands of journalists attending.

If you want to check out the sites involved in the wedding, such as the Westminster Abbey and other interesting parts of London, this Google Earth tour should come in handy.

Alternatively, you can use Street View to get some panoramic views of the locations. If you do you'll also see Google Maps' little surprise for the occasion, the traditional Pegman has been replaced by a bride and groom drawn in its style.