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Next June Queen Elizabeth II is scheduled to celebrate her 86th birthday along with her highly anticipated Diamond Jubilee, marking her 60th year at the head of the British throne. The event is sure to be the party of the year, so it's a good thing that the queen just recently practiced her party-planning skills at the wedding of her grandson, Prince William, to Kate Middleton.

"She made the point that there are certain times when you have to strike the right balance," William recently told Robert Hardmann for his book, Our Queen, according to the UK's Daily Mail. "And it's advice like that, which is really key, when you know that she's seen and done it before."

The prince picked his battles while his grandmother was helping him plan the wedding. One he lost? Wardrobe. "I wanted to decide what to wear for the wedding," he said. "I was given a categorical: 'No, you'll wear this!" the queen told him of his Irish Guards uniform. "So you don't always get what you want, put it that way," William said.

There were a few other snags along the way, like the guest list. "I was given this official list of 777 names — dignitaries, governors, all sorts of people — and not one person I knew." So the "horrified" prince called his grandmother for guidance. "I rang her up the next day and said, 'Do we need to be doing this?' And she said: 'No. Start with your friends first and then go from there.' And she told me to bin the list.'"

Acknowledging that his grandmother was "a massive help" planning the royal ceremony, William opened up about their relationship. "As I've got older, she's become an even more important part of my life," he said.