Relief: The couple said they were delighted to break the news of their engagement KOMPAS.com - Prince William and his fiancee Kate Middleton have given their first full interview as a couple and spoken of their desire to start a family after their marriage next year.
The couple, who met as students while at St Andrew's University, became engaged while holidaying in Kenya last month and are to marry next year, Clarence House has confirmed.
And after Prince William confirmed he had given Kate his late mother Diana's engagement ring, the couple gave a revealing interview, discussing their early days as a couple, their relationships with their family and their future together.
Kate had earlier described Prince William's proposal of marriage as 'very romantic and very personal' but the second-in-line to the throne admitted he suffered great nerves despite their years together as a couple.
'It was about three weeks ago on holiday in Kenya - we had a little private time away together with some friends and I just decided it was the right time really,' he explained.
'We'd been talking about marriage for a while so it wasn't a massive surprise. But as every guy out there will know, it takes a certain amount of motivation to get yourself going. But I had done a bit of planning to show my romantic side.'
'There's a true romantic in there,' added a smiling Kate. 'We were out there with friends so I really didn't expect it at all - it was a total shock when it came and we're very excited.'
Asked whether he had asked Kate's father for her hand in her marriage before proposing, William admitted he had decided it was the safest option to ask her first.
'I was torn between asking Kate's dad first and the realisation he might actually say no dawned upon me so I thought if I asked Kate first he couldn't really say no, so I did it that way round and managed to speak to Mike soon after it happened,' he explained.
Speaking as the couple posed for pictures at St James' Palace earlier, William had explained the significance of his fiancee's engagement ring.
'As you may have recognised, it's my mother's engagement ring, so of course it's very special to me and Kate's very special to me now as well, and it's only right the two are put together.
'It was my way of making sure my mother didn't miss out on today, and the excitement and the fact that we're going to spend the rest of our lives together.'
And as the couple confirmed their happiness to have announced their engagement to the world, Prince William revealed he'd been carrying his mother's ring with him 'in my rucksack, for about three weeks before that'.
'I literally would not let it because I knew if it disappeared I would be in a lot of trouble! You hear a lot of horror stories about proposing and things going horribly wrong but it went really well and I was really pleased she said yes,' he added.
'I've been reliably informed it's a sapphire with some diamonds but I'm sure everyone recognises it.'
Kate, who is to be known as Catherine from now on, said of Princess Diana's ring: 'I just hope I look after it, it's very, very special.'
'I would love to have met her and obviously she's an inspirational woman to look up to,' Kate added.
William interjected: 'It's about carving your own future - no-one's trying to fill my mother's shoes and what she did was fantastic. It's about making your own destiny and Kate will do a very good job of that.'
The relaxed interview came on a pivotal day for the couple's relationship but Prince William was quick to stress that they did not intend to rush into starting a family together.
'I think we'll take it one step at a time,' he said. 'We'll get over the marriage thing first and then maybe look at the kids but obviously we want to start a family. We'll have to start thinking about that.'
But in a discussion in which Kate repeatedly thanked her family for their support since she began her relationship with the royal, she added: 'I hope we'll be able to have a happy family ourselves because mine have been great over the years helping me with difficult times.'
The 'difficult times' Kate referred to surfaced later in their interview when she was asked about criticism of her perceived lack of employment during her relationship with Prince William.
But 28-year-old Kate stressed she was not concerned by outside opinions of her personality and had played an active role in her family's party planning business.
'I know I've been working very hard for the family business - sometimes those days are long days,' she said.
'I think I know I'm working hard and pulling my weight and everyone I work with can see that I'm doing that, so that's really what matters.
'The people around home are very supportive to us and those are the people that really matter to us, our close friends and family.
'You can only be true to yourself and sort of have to ignore a lot of what's being said - you obviously take it on board but you have to be yourself.
Kate met William while they were both studying history of art at St Andrew's - though William later switched to geography - and she had been labelled a 'Princess-in-Waiting' after claims she had hung a poster of the prince on her wall as a teenage girl.
But Kate, the eldest child of businessman Michael and ex-air hostess Carole Middleton, laughed off the claims in Tuesday's interview.
'I had the Levi's guy on my wall, not a picture of William!' she smiled, with William interjecting: 'It was me in Levis, obviously!'
As the interview took in their early relationship, William joked that Kate's cooking had 'got better' while explaining the pressures of his airforce commitments rarely left him the time to cook for her.
'I would say I'm getting better at cooking, Kate would say I'm getting worse,' he continued.
'I get quite lazy about cooking because when I come back from work it's the last thing I want to do. But when I was trying to impress Kate I was trying to cook these amazing fancy dinners and all that would happen was that I'd burn something or something would overspill and Kate would be sitting in the background trying to help and basically taking control of the entire situation.'
Kate's first encounters with the rest of the Royal Family were successful though she was aware of the magnitude of meeting her potential in-laws.
'I was quite nervous about meeting William's father but he was very welcoming and friendly so it couldn't have gone easier for me,' Kate explained.
Kate confirmed she had met the Queen for the first time at the wedding of William's cousin Peter Phillips and Autumn Kelly in May 2008 and said the monarch was 'very friendly'.
William added his grandmother had 'wanted to meet Kate for a while - it was very nice of her to come over and say hello and we had a little chat and got on really well'.
While the interview concentrated on the couple's happy news and the history of their romance, there was a brief mention for their rumoured split in 2007.
'To be honest, I wouldn't believe everything you read in the paper,' William stressed but confirmed: 'In that particular instance, we did split up for a bit.'
'We were both very young, we were at university and we were both defining ourselves and being different characters. It was very much [about] trying to find our own way and we were growing up. It was just about a bit of space and it soon worked out for the better.'
Kate added: 'I think at the time I wasn't happy about it but it made me a stronger person. You find out things about yourself and I think you can get quite consumed by a relationship when you're younger and I really valued that time [apart] looking back on it.'
Asked about friends' assessment of the abiding strength of the couple's relationship, Kate said: 'I think when you go out with someone for quite a long time, you do get to know each other very well.
'You go through the good times, you go through the bad times - both personally but in a relationship as well - but I think you come out of that stronger.'
Concluding the interview, William said the pair were 'hugely excited' and 'looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together.'
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