Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebration countdown begins

The celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee, which is set to commence on Thursday have kick-started. The Royal Family's official social media accounts have already started sharing a sneak peek of the preparations for the royal event.

The British Queen will be the first British Monarch to celebrate a Platinum jubilee after marking 70 years of service to the people of the United Kingdom, Realms and the Commonwealth.

In this view, Britain is expecting millions of participants and guests to attend the royal four-day event.

The four-day-long event to celebrate the queen's 96th birthday on Thursday, June 2 will begin with the annual parade starting at 11 am. Members of the royal family will ride in carriages and on horseback alongside more than 1,400 military personnel, 200 horses and 400 musicians from Buckingham Palace down The Mall to Horse Guard's Palace for the event, Fox News reported.

A flypast featuring more than 70 aircraft from the Royal Air Force, Army and Royal Navy will follow the parade, following which, it is expected that the queen will greet the public from the Buckingham Palace balcony.

The second day of the event marks the service of thanksgiving at London's St Paul's Cathedral. The largest church bell in the country, which was made in 1882 and restored in 2021, will be rung for the service. The bell has tolled on eight occasions since, but this is the first royal occasion it will be rung, Fox News reported.

Scrapping the age-old tradition of British monarch taking the salute to the troops during the military display, this year Queen's son Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, as well as her daughter Princess Anne and her grandson Prince William, will take the salute instead.

The British Queen will be accompanied by three of her four children and their spouses: Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall; Anne and retired Vice Admiral Timothy Laurence; and Prince Edward and Sophie, the Countess of Wessex, Fox News reported.

Further on Day third, the queen is expected to attend one of Britain's biggest horse racing events at Epsom Downs along with the royal family. The jockeys of past and present will perform a guard of honour at the horse racing event.

Around 22,000 guests are invited to attend the Platinum Party at the Palace concert later in the evening, where the artists Alicia Keys, Hans Zimmer, Queen and Adam Lambert, Nile Rodgers, Duran Duran, Andrea Bocelli, Craig David, George Ezra and Ela Eyre will perform. In the event, David Beckham, Dame Julie Andrews and Sir David Attenborough are expected to make guest appearances, while Elton John will give a specially recorded performance, Fox News reported.

While on the final day of the event, more than 60,000 people have registered to host Big Jubilee Lunches in an attempt to set a world record for the longest street party with more than 10 million people anticipated to join in celebrations of communities in the commonwealth on Sunday, June 5.

Around ten million people will participate in the lunch, with international participation from Canada to Brazil, New Zealand to Japan, and South Africa to Switzerland, Fox News reported.

The celebration will end with a three-hour-long peagant, with the Gold State Carriage, led by The Sovereign's Escort. The peagant will highlight the queen's achievement throughout the last seven decades, before the celebration tunes in the people around the world on the music of Ed Sheeran singing "God Save the Queen."