Wedding coin hit for not bearing resemblance to couple

Britain's Royal Mint on Thursday released a coin featuring portraits of Prince William and Kate Middleton, but critics said the picture looked nothing like the couple. Middleton appears plump in the face and lips and has bags under her eyes. Available in silver or gold, the 5-pound (7.70 US dollar) coin — which costs 9.99 pounds (15.40 US dollars) to buy — marks the April 29 wedding of the second-in-line to the British throne. Ingrid Seward of Majesty magazine said it was a shame the image was so "unflattering". "They are both gorgeous looking and they are both very photogenic, so how they got it so wrong, it's hard to fathom," she told Britain's Sky News. Engravers managed a better likeness of William's father and mother, Prince Charles and Diana, the Princess of Wales, in an official coin released to mark their 1981 wedding. The designer of that coin, Philip Nathan, said the latest coin artist perhaps needed a little more time to get the image right. The Royal Mint said the coin was designed by its in-house engraving team and insisted the portraits had gone though "a rigorous approval process." Both the Queen and Prince William had given their consent to the design and staff had used photos of the couple to produce the images, the mint said in a statement. "The inspiration for the design came from photographs of the couple at a sporting event," the mint said. Dickie Arbiter, a former royal spokesman, said it is often difficult to produce accurate images on a coin. The coin is the latest official merchandise to celebrate the royal wedding. William's office has also already approved a souvenir tankard, plate and pill box that feature the couple's entwined initials, the prince's coronet emblem and the date of the wedding.—AP