The wedding of the decade saw Prince William marry his university girlfriend, Catherine Middleton, in front of a global TV audience of more than 60 million people.
While few fans need reminding that their romance started ten years earlier when they were both studying at St Andrews University in Scotland, it would seem there had been ample opportunity for the pair to meet beforehand. Both Prince William and Kate undertook gap years and went on a number of exciting adventures.
In fact, the pair were just weeks away from meeting as they joined the same challenge programme, Raleigh International.
The future couple spent ten weeks trekking, helping locals and building in Chile, albeit a few weeks apart. Malcolm Sutherland, who ran both expeditions, has called the coincidence “absolutely crazy.”
He continued: "For me, it was a normal assumption that everybody else would have realised what that connection was. I think a lot of people don't realise there is that common connection there in their pasts."
In royal biographer Katie Nicholl's book 'Kate: The Future Queen', Mr Sutherland says: " William coped very well, and what struck me about him was how normal he was.
"He said he wanted to be treated like everyone else, and he was. When you saw him cleaning the toilets, it wasn't for the cameras, he really did clean the lavatories."
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The 18-year-old travelled to Chile where he spent three months working on community projects with the expedition organisation Raleigh International.
During his time there he helped build and decorate houses and playgrounds, and was seen painting and chopping wood, and he also worked on a dairy farm.
While The Princess of Wales would have followed a very similar programme, she spent the second part of her gap year studying at the British Institute in Florence and crewing on Round the World Challenge boats in the Solent.
The next part of Prince William's gap year was certainly less glamorous than his future wife's as he spent it in the jungles of Belize with the Welsh Guards.
Ms Nicholl wrote in her book 'William and Harry' that the prince was placed in a "tough environment." She explained how "he was taught how to kill and prepare his food. An exercise code-named Native Trail began with instructors slaughtering a pig, hanging it from a pole and butchering it.”
She added: “The soldiers, William included, were then given a live chicken to dispatch.
"They had to wring its neck and cut off its head and feet with a machete, pluck its feathers and gut it before cooking it over a fire, exactly as they would have to do if they were living off the land in a jungle war. They were shown how to make a termite stew – and then made to eat it.”
The sleeping situation was also a challenge. She wrote: "At night, William tried to snatch what little sleep he could in the rain in a hammock strung between two trees."
In addition to Belize and his Raleigh Challenge in Chile, William also reportedly used his gap year to explore places like Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana and the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues.
While the couple narrowly missed one another during their gap year, Ms Nicholl also claimed that Prince William may have first caught Kate's eye when their schools' hockey teams played each other.
The young prince, then nine, was a student at Ludgrove Prep School and his teammates went to Kate's school - St. Andrew's Prep - for a match. In her book, Ms Nicholl writes: "Although she wasn't especially interested in boys, the arrival of one particular young man had caught her attention.
"Nearby Ludgrove Prep school would often play matches against St. Andrew's Prep, and there was much excitement when Prince William, a left back on Ludgrove's Colts team, came to St. Andrew's to play a hockey match when he was nine years old.
"William, like Kate, loved sports and was one of the best hockey and rugby players in his year. Of course, the arrival of the prince generated a flurry of excitement."
