On their platinum wedding anniversary, a full celebratory peal will sound from Westminster Abbey, where the 21-year-old future monarch Princess Elizabeth walked up the aisle to marry her dashing Greek and Danish prince in 1947.
At 1pm on Monday November 20, the Abbey's Company of Ringers will begin a complicated peal consisting of 5,070 changes or sequences, with the 70 a nod to the special anniversary.
It will take the team of 10 ringers around three hours and 20 minutes to complete, as they deliver the tribute without a break.
It is a historic tradition that the Abbey bells are rung for significant royal occasions and anniversaries, and the Queen is the first British monarch to celebrate a platinum wedding anniversary.
The fairy-tale royal wedding was a morale boost in the tough years that followed the Second World War and millions of people tuned in to listen to the ceremony on the wireless.
Royals and dignitaries gathered inside the Abbey, waiting for the young royal bride, whose Norman Hartnell wedding dress was hand-embroidered with more than 10,000 pearls and crystals.
War-time leader Winston Churchill summed up the occasion as "a flash of colour on the hard road we travel".
For austerity reasons, very little extra seating was provided inside the gothic Abbey, with the number of guests kept to 2,000.
In contrast to later royal weddings, the only flowers in the Abbey were in large vases either side of the High Altar filled with white lilies and chrysanthemums, pink carnations, roses, variegated ivy and camellia foliage.
The Grave of the Unknown Warrior was the only stone that was not covered by the special carpet.
The day after the wedding, Princess Elizabeth followed a royal tradition started by her mother of sending her wedding bouquet back to the Abbey to be laid on the grave.
Less than five years later, the Princess became Queen Elizabeth II on the death of her father George VI and now 91 and having reigned for more than 65 years, she is Britain's longest reigning monarch.
The Abbey is also where the Queen was crowned in 1953, and where the funerals of the Queen Mother and Diana, Princess of Wales were held, and where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge married in 2011.
Elizabeth II has maintained a close connection to the church, which is a Royal Peculiar and subject only to the sovereign and not to any archbishop nor bishop.
The Queen and Philip attended thanksgiving services at the Abbey to commemorate their silver, golden and diamond wedding anniversaries, but this milestone is not being marked which such a service.
The Duke has officially retired from public duties and is now 96, and making the most of his free time.
Steeped in more than 1,000 years of history, Benedictine monks first came to the site in the middle of the 10th century.
The present church, begun by Henry III in 1245, is one of the most important Gothic buildings in the country, with the medieval shrine of Anglo-Saxon saint Edward the Confessor still at its heart.
Its official title is the Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster, and it has been the coronation church since 1066. The Queen's was the 38th.
It is the final resting place of 17 monarchs, among them Charles II and Elizabeth I.
On the day of the royal wedding, eight bells rang out in celebration. There are currently 10 bells, located in the north west tower - two more were added in 1971.
A Westminster Abbey spokeswoman said: "A full peal demands considerable concentration by the ringers, all of whom commit the progress of the 5,000 changes to memory."
