Royal Wedding – Marilyn R. Gardner

tea and scones — Tea, Scones & Royal Weddings

What’s not to love about a royal wedding? It takes the romantic in all of us, creates a script, provides the actors , dresses all this up with cathedrals and palaces and then, with twenty-first century technology, brings the complete package into our living rooms. At the end of the day even cynics are stealing peaks at the wedding dress and watching replays, volume turned low, lest those around them call them out for hypocrisy.

4am in 1981 I dressed up in all the finery a poor, recent graduate had in her wardrobe and celebrated the wedding of the decade – Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Princess Diana, as she became that day, was a vision of loveliness for the eighties and a fairy tale bride. This year and three decades later I got up in pajamas at the normal time and curled up with tea, and (wishing I had scones to go with my tea) watched live stream as twitter announced by the second how many tweets the Royal Wedding received. Kate Middleton seems far less a fairy tale, and much more a real bride, ready to enjoy the day but not under any illusions that she is a fairy-tale princess. Cynical as I am about monarchy, it has been a great morning.

Despite the track record of the royal family (of Queen Elizabeth’s children there are 3 divorces out of 4 marriages) the solemnity of the wedding, the beauty of the bride, and the high view of marriage that was spoken (sometimes in words I hardly understood) there is a hope for this couple. The challenge to them is no less serious and awesome as is the challenge to any couple that is saying their vows on their wedding day, but the telescopic lens that they will live under is far different.

There are naysayers at any wedding whispering in audible tones that “it will be hard” “it won’t last” “look at the track record”. Those among us who still long for marriages to succeed and believe that they are worth fighting for will hopefully cheer louder than the pessimists and enjoy the history made today through ivory and white satin, carriages and guards, a prince and a princess.