The UK is gearing up to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee weekend in style, with 1,458 public events and 1,775 officially registered street parties or private events from June 2-5.

Celebrations are spread across the country, with 240 in and around London, 208 around Manchester, 133 near Birmingham, 98 in Scotland – including four in Orkney and one on the Isle of Lewis – 21 in Northern Ireland and two in Guernsey.

But the Royal Family’s Platinum Jubilee website is calling for more people to get involved. ‘There are many ways to take part in the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, whether you are a local authority, school, business, community group or want to get involved yourself,’ a doorman said. word of the site, which offers a toolkit to plan your jubilee. It includes free Queen photography, games for kids, recipes and a free-to-download platinum playlist that includes Ed Sheeran, the Spice Girls, Kylie Minogue and Elton John.

“The special extended bank holiday weekend will provide an opportunity for communities and people across the UK to come together to celebrate this historic milestone,” they added.

The country will spend a total of £823m to celebrate the bank holiday weekend, spending an average of £83 each on food, drink and union flag-inspired decorations, according to MoneySupermarket.com. That’s almost three-quarters more than the £480million that 34% of Britons said they planned to spend to celebrate the royal wedding in 2018.

Waitrose reported that Pimm’s sales are up more than 260% on a year ago, while searches for ‘jubilee’ have risen 176% on their website in the past two weeks. Searches for platinum jubilee food and drink increased by 114% and garden party recipes by 59%.

John Lewis also reported that searches for “jubilee” on its website were up 55% week-over-week. In a sign that street parties are already happening, he said searches for outdoor chairs were up 33% from last month, with searches for bunting up 31%.

B&Q said it sold 100,000 meters of banners, while reported sales of Sainsbury’s Union Jack cake stands were up 2,783% week-on-week.

The traditionally tongue-in-cheek British sense of humor is on display among the memorabilia available to mark the historic royal event: Mattel launched a limited-edition Barbie doll inspired by the queen, and several queen-shaped gnomes were put on for sale on eBay, as well as mini sculptures of the Queen inside a snow globe that plays the national anthem – and corgi-shaped salt shakers. Amazon and Etsy stock queen-shaped solar-powered bobble heads and even a “Pin the Diamond on the Crown” game.

By contrast, public and private celebrations are largely steeped in tradition – albeit with some unusual exceptions: the South Bank in London will host an event to teach children to write punk songs and host an LGBTQI+ party for insurgents with a “seditionary”. bunch of abolitionists, unforgivables and scoundrels”.

In Bristol, a hippie singer-songwriter called I-Sha-Vii, on a self-proclaimed mission to make people around her happier, will perform.

However, the festivities mostly follow older patterns: there will be a Make, Bake and Decorate a British Treat Box Fit for a Queen event in Manchester. The people of Thornhill will cook pizzas together. The Bedale Community Library is hosting a tea party, while there will be a picnic at the Shrewsbury pub.

There will be a free wildflower display and floral arrangements in Beddington, a children’s funfair in West Sussex, and readings of royal fairy tales by author Sally Pomme Clayton based on her recent book The King with Dirty Feet. At Stoke Poges there will be a Best of British Disco Karaoke.

There will be fireworks as charities and national councils light up the UK’s more than 1,500 Community and Commonwealth beacons – a longstanding tradition of celebrating royal jubilees, weddings and coronations. extending across the UK, Channel Islands, Isle of Man and British Overseas Territories.

The lighthouse lighting ceremony will begin at 9 p.m. on Thursday June 2 when the main lighthouse, involving The Tree of Trees – a 21-meter-tall “tree” made up of 350 smaller trees – will be lit in a special ceremony. at Buckingham Palace. Girlguiding members will light an additional 70 beacons across the country, while former servicemen and women from Walking with the Wounded said their lights would shine atop the highest peaks in each of the UK’s four nations.