Parents-to-be Will and Kate visit charity for bereaved parents and thrill crowd with happy walkabout.


It can't be an easy task to meet with bereaved families but somebody should do it and in Britain it's usually the royals. So today we saw Prince William and Duchess Kate, excited parents-in-waiting, meet with bereaved families of lost children at one of their charities, Child Bereavement UK.

But it wasn't all sad in Buckinghamshire; the couple thrilled a waiting crowd with a walkabout, accepting gifts of stuffed animals, flowers and chocolates, and talking animatedly to well-wishers, reported The Daily Mail.

Afterwards, people who saw the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge up close said she looked happy and in glowing health. Both were very chatty, but there were no off-the-cuff remarks about whether it's a boy or a girl.

According to the HRHDuchessKate blog, she was wearing a new $900 cream wool short coat, by British label Goat, over a short, black shift dress with a white Peter Pan collar from Topshop that cost about $100. She had on black tights, shoes and gloves.

The couple, who are expecting a future monarch in July, met with staff of the charity before being introduced to several bereaved families who had lost children.

Child Bereavement UK trains thousands of professionals each year to help families cope when a child dies or is dying, or when a child is facing bereavement himself. William, who lost mother Princess Diana in 1997, has been an official patron of the charity, run by one of his mother's close friends, since 2009.

The couple arrived at the charity two days after their last joint public appearance, for the traditional distribution of shamrocks to Irish Guards on St. Patrick's Day. While there, the duchess told a guardsman that she wants a boy and William wants a girl, according to the guardsman who spoke to reporters.

William went to the bereavement center the day after he attended a testimonial dinner in a London hotel for an Irish rugby star, a gala also attended by Bono, another rugby fan. The dinner was private, so not on his schedule.

Also, William has moved up another notch in the royal family's schedule of advancement: Queen Elizabeth II, his grandmother, created him a personal aide-de-camp to the monarch, as his father, Prince Charles, is.

It's an honorary position but it shows that future king William, as he turns 31 this summer, is being drawn more closely into the the life of a full-time working royal, even as he continues his job as a helicopter pilot in the RAF based in Wales.