Photographing  royalty is no easy task, especially if they’re children. Just ask Hugo Bernand. The photographer was assigned the job of capturing the official photos for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and in a new interview he reveals the drastic measures he was forced to take to get the royal children to sit still.

Working with a total staff of seven, Bernand shot these photos in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace. The images feature the celebrated couple surrounded by their families, bridesmaids, groomsmen and many pages.

“There were a lot of preliminary meetings and walk-throughs of the Throne Room. Catherine loves photography and is very interested in it. Just how light we wanted the family picture to be became a project for us,” Bernand said. “We wanted the room to look like it was flooded with sunlight from a spring morning, filled with glorious light. And we knew we couldn’t count on the weather, so we created it with the flip of a switch.”

Striving for a style that Bernand says was meant to be “effortless, calm and beautiful,” the shoot was staged just after the ceremony and right before the now-famous kiss on the balcony.

“We had spares of everything – cables, lights, cameras, lenses – and spares for the spares,” Bernand told Women’s Wear Daily. “Before the day, we staged dress rehearsals with stand-ins and stop-watches. We knew that if everyone had sprinted back from Westminster Abbey, we would only have had 44 minutes to shoot. In the end, we did everything in 26 minutes.”

And in that brief half-hour, Bernand says it was the very last photo in which he captured magic. Of course, he had to use a little trickery of his own to make it work.

“It was the last one we took – and you can imagine everyone anxiously looking at their watches,” he said. “I promised the kids jelly beans and wiggle worms, and it worked out.”

Books on the Royal Wedding