Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom at each Investiture. The Queen usually conducts the investitures, although the Prince of Wales, The Princess Royal or, more recently, the Duke of Cambridge also hold some investitures on behalf of the Queen. During the ceremony, the Queen enters the ballroom of Buckingham Palace attended by two Gurkha orderly officers, a tradition begun in 1876 by Queen Victoria. On duty on the dais are five members of the Queen's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard, which was created in 1485 by Henry VII; they are the oldest, but not most senior, military corps in the United Kingdom. Four
Buckingham Palace to rise. Today, there is no official dress code. Most men invited to Buckingham Palace in the daytime choose to wear service uniform or lounge suits; a minority wear morning coats, and in the evening, depending on the formality of the occasion, black tie or white tie. Débutantes were aristocratic young ladies making their first entrée into society through presentation to the monarch at court. These occasions, known as "coming out", took place at the palace from the reign of Edward VII. Wearing full court dress, with three ostrich feathers in their hair, débutantes entered, curtsied, and performed a backwards