Private funeral at Windsor

The coffin containing the body of Princess Margaret covered by a Royal Standard is carried from a London hospital Saturday

LONDON, England -- The funeral of Princess Margaret will be a private occasion for family and friends.

It will take place on Friday at 3.00 p.m. (10 a.m. ET) at St George's Chapel, Windsor, 20 miles west of London.

The Queen has declared a period of royal mourning until Friday's ceremony.

Members of the Royal Family and their households will wear dark colours and black ties. Military officers on public duties will wear black armbands.

Official duties are continuing for members of the royal family but social engagements have been postponed.

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State funerals with full pomp and ceremony in Britain are generally limited to sovereigns but may, by order of the reigning monarch and by a vote in Parliament, providing the funds, be extended to exceptionally distinguished people.

Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, and most recently Sir Winston Churchill, are examples.

Ceremonial royal funerals are for those members of the British royal family who hold high military rank, for the consort of the sovereign, and for the heir to the throne.

But Princess Margaret's funeral at Windsor falls into a third category of royal funerals.

The private royal ceremony is for all other members of the royal family, their children and their spouses.

No burial place has yet been announced for the Princess although there is royal precedence for burial at Frogmore, Windsor.

The Frogmore Royal Burial Ground lies immediately to the south of the Mausoleum of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the gardens of Frogmore House.

Members of the royal family, sovereigns excluded except for King Edward VIII who abdicated, have been buried there since the consecration of the ground in 1928.

Closed to the public, an information board indicates who is buried there.

The first burials at Frogmore were those of nine members of the royal family who had previously been interred in the Royal Vault in St George's Chapel at Windsor, including two of Queen Mary's brothers, and Princess Helena and her husband.

Some of those more recently buried there include Queen Marie of Yugoslavia (1961), a great-grand-daughter of Queen Victoria, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (1972 and 1986), and the Marchioness of Cambridge (1988).

St George's Chapel, Windsor has been one of the royal family's key places of worship for centuries and is the final resting place of 10 former monarchs.

Visitors to London's Buckingham Palace read a notice of Princess Margaret's death

The chapel is considered one of the finest perpendicular buildings in England and a great example of Gothic architecture.

The first sovereign to be buried there was King Edward IV in 1483, who ordered the building of the chapel, as it is seen at the present day, in 1475. He had the existing chapel down and rebuilt.

By the time of his death only the choir portion was completed and the building programme was continued by King Henry VI, who is also buried there.

The chapel was finally completed in 1528 during the reign of King Henry VIII, another monarch interred there.

Other kings of England buried there are Charles I, George III, George IV, William IV, Edward VII, George V and George VI.

The chapel has also been the scene of happier occasions, including the confirmations of Prince Edward and Prince William and the christening of Prince Harry.

One of the biggest occasions there in recent years was the marriage between Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones.

Like Westminster Abbey, St George's is known as a "royal peculiar", meaning it is not subject to the authority of a bishop or archbishop and the Dean of Windsor is responsible only to the monarch.

The Queen and her family mostly use the chapel for the Easter Sunday service as well as royal occasions.

St George's is also the Chapel of the Order of the Garter, founded around 1348 by King Edward III.

The Order is Britain's most senior order of chivalry and the banners of the knights hang above the stalls in the choir.

The Queen attends a special service with the Knights and Ladies of the Order in the chapel each June.

More than half a million tourists visit the chapel every year.