The royal wedding is an event that I will remember for a long time. The fairy tale princess Kate emerging into the grandeur of Westminster Abbey to marry her Prince William and live happily ever after.
Among the many venues available to watch the spectacular event, including the Internet, I choose to tune into the Today show for the coverage. My mean cable company won’t give me the BBC unless I hand over my first born child, so it was American all of the way baby. Plus, I like hearing Matt Lauer forcing his comments over the more polite chatter of the British co-hosts.
There was a lot of commentary pre-walk-down-the-aisle about the peerage as they assembled one and all. Strangely though, everyone fell silent when the hats appeared. From tall constructions that looked like alphabetical characters from a forgotten language to traditional cover-half-your face beauties, there is no one who can carry off a hat like a royal. Well, maybe except for Samantha Cameron who decided not to wear one and caused something close to a scandal. Camilla is so old news.
But oh, the wedding dress. Sigh.
And the bride. Ahhh.
What can you say, the entire wedding was all pulled off beautifully. The couple, bright and sweet, the Archbishop of Canterbury giving a powerful message, the crowd surging in a dignified manner to catch a glimpse of that first true love’s kiss.
Here at home, we can thank high definition television to give us a better seat than many of the dukes and duchesses with front row seats and we could submerge ourselves into the fantasy of being there. The decision to relieve the viewing audience of commentary during the ceremony was a smart one. Not all coverage was as generous, I’ve since learned.
We all needed this, I think, a story of hope and love in the midst of a grim economy and even more grim natural disasters. And if the crowd pressured the couple into giving a second kiss when the first one went by almost too fast for the news cameras, it was only because no one wanted it to end.