Meghan Markle joins Royal Family for Christmas festivities

Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, Christmas

Meghan Markle continues to break the traditions of the Royal Family, with the permission of her future grandmother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II.

This year, Queen Elizabeth invited Markle to join in the Royal Christmas celebration, something never done before with unwed couples.

Markle, whose engagement to the Queen's grandson Prince Harry, has other firsts, including her being bi-racial, which will make this the first mixed-race marriage for the Royal Family. That is in addition to her being a divorced American actress - although none of those is a first.

Queen Elizabeth shared in her Christmas address, that she and husband Prince Philip, "look forward to welcoming new members into it next year."

The people of Britain are welcoming Markle with open arms as well. As the couple walked to church with Harry's brother and sister-in-law, Prince William and Kate, they were met with enthusiasm.

For the procession, Markle wore a camel-colored wrap coat by Sentaler of Canada, Stuart Weitzman over-the-knee boots and carried a suede Chloe bag. It was her hat however, that caught the attention of viewers. A commenter on Twitter loved that Markle "embraced the fancy futuristic church lady hat situation that the Brit's are so into."

Not to be forgotten, the equally beautiful Duchess Kate wore a festive green and red plaid coat by Miu Miu.

A group photo taken by Karen Anvil who was in the crowd shows off how at ease the family is together. Anvil told the BBC how she nabbed the viral pic, “I was just sort of shouting and I just went 'Merry Christmas!' like an idiot. I was fan-girling. That's all I said and got them to look.”

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