It was almost 30 years ago, but I still remember it vividly. It started on July 28th because I stayed up all night for the event of the decade – Prince Charles’ wedding to Lady Diana Spencer. This young, beautiful, innocent, barely out of her teens girl seemed to carry the future of a whole country on her back. We were close in age – actually, I was two years younger, but everyone I knew admired her, even though we had nothing in common with her. After all, she was marrying a prince and I was lying in the pallet I had made in the living room floor, watching a Joe E. Brown movie that was playing before the wedding coverage started at some unearthly hour like 4 a.m.
Before I started college later that year, I even had the Princess Diana haircut (although I must admit mine wasn’t nearly as cute as hers). This was so far back in the day that we couldn’t get wedding coverage on 15 different channels and no one even knew what the Internet was, so no chance of streaming video.
This Friday, her oldest son William will get married. William, the young child that was left motherless at the age of 15, is second in line for the British crown. Some speculate that his father, Prince Charles, now age 62, may never be king. Will Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, who is still going strong at age 85, skip Charles and make William king?
Who knows what is going to happen, but this week, we are once again celebrating a royal wedding. It is one engagement that seemed like it would never come. Unlike Charles and Diana, who only a year or so before marrying, William and Kate have dated for eight years. Although Charles and Diana’s marriage ended tragically (rumors of cheating, divorce, and then Diana’s death), I am still hoping for a storybook ending for William and Kate.
I will try to get up Friday morning to watch, but 30 years later, it is a little more difficult. Instead of being a student, I have to be at work that day, so I may choose sleep over the wedding. But, there is still enough of a dreamer in me to want to catch the highlights later on the Internet.