Ju5t Wed

I know, I know - there are a whole bunch of people that don't give a monkeys about the Royal Wedding.  I know, I know, that wars and poverty and earthquakes and tornadoes abound.  And I know, I know, that we fought a bloody revolution over two centuries ago to throw off the tyranny of the rule of a monarch.  So go ahead and judge me, but I was well excited for the Royal Wedding.  I love all things wedding, and what with tiaras and glass carriages, good old British pomp and circumstance, a newly-minted princess (or duchess, whatevs) and the dress, Oh, the DRESS - what's not to like about a royal wedding?

I know I'm not the only one.  But for her husband's emergency surgery, I would have been toasting Wills and Kate with friend J.  Friend P told me that she and her teen daughter only just discovered a fascination for it in the few days leading up to the wedding.  And after I facebooked my excitement on the eve of the big day, I received a message from a faraway friend in New Zealand to say she too was watching the coverage.

Because of the time difference, I wasn't planning to watch it live (at 0300 Pacific time!).  So I set my dvr to record BBC's 6+ hours of commercial-free coverage and went to bed, intending to watch it on my own in the morning.  However, at nearly 3 a.m. I unexpectedly woke to an empty bed.  I wandered out to the living room, my sleep-addled brain completely spacing the event, and the husband said, "You came out at the perfect moment!"  Kate was just climbing into the car at her hotel.  "I haven't been up watching the wedding build-up since midnight," he said, then with a wry smile admitted, "okay, I totally have."

You should understand that the husband is a born-and-bred Englishman down to his very bones.  "The crowd is brilliant; it's so nice for us all to have a reason to celebrate being British," he said.  In the weeks leading up to the wedding, he would send me links to the anticipatory press coverage, indulging me in what he knows is a bit of a wedding fetish.  He himself, though, was not really that arsed about it all.  Until the BBC pre-ceremony coverage completely sucked him in.

So I was treated to a viewing partner, which was awesome.  The husband voiced firm approval of Kate's gown - high praise indeed - and a bloke's understandable admiration of  maid-of-honor Pippa's amazing dress.  I loved watching William and Harry nervously awaiting the bride.  I got a bit misty-eyed as Wills whispered, "you look stunning, babe," when Kate arrived at the altar (according to a lip reader employed by The Telegraph - other interpretations were that he simply said "you look beautiful" but I would love to think that the prince refers to her as "babe").  D turned up the volume when the congregation belted out Jerusalem, and I smiled when he cheered lightly under his breath as the couple was pronounced man and wife and discreetly crossed his fingers in hope when it was intoned "let no man put asunder."

Much like I vividly remember watching the pageantry of Charles and Diana's wedding as a child 30 years ago, decades from now I will fondly recall watching the union of William and Kate as a live event in the dark pre-dawn hours with D - a completely unexpected, but entirely enjoyable treat.  May their marriage be a long and happy one.  Given the obvious love and affection displayed today, I have great hope that it will be so.

Congratulations, William and Kate!

UPDATE: For those of you finding my site by searching for what Ju5t Wed means: There are no personalized license plates in Britain and a number must be included, so there is a bit of an art to getting plates that seem to say words through a combination of letters and numbers.  In this case, the plate cleverly reads "Just Wed."  I am puzzled, though, as to which vehicle this plate came from, since the front of the car (owned by Prince Charles since 1969) reflected an entirely ordinary number plate. 

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So tell me, were you one of the millions that tuned in to watch some of the wedding?  What did you think of the hoopla?