Saturday, April 30, 2011

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?

18 comments:

  1. I did not watch any of the wedding, and I even tried as hard as I could to avoid any news of it. I wasn't even aware until about Tuesday or Wednesday that the wedding would take place on Friday. It's not like I have anything against the wedding, but I'm just very contrary, and when I'm being deluded with media coverage and people talking about it everywhere I look, it makes me less and less interested. And yes, this is also why I generally don't read best-sellers or watch very popular movies ;)

    What I thought was sweet, though, was your unexpected treat of the early morning quiet time with your husband, and the image of the two of you getting all misty-eyed while watching the wedding together. Too cute! :)

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  2. Oops, my brain is still waiting for coffee to kick in. I meant 'deluged', not 'deluded'. Some linguist I am! ;)

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  3. I didn't think I was really going to care- I mean I wanted to see the dress and all that, but I didn't have any intention of getting up early or DVR'ing it.

    But when I tuned in to the coverage while working from home I found myself interested and ended up watching the whole thing when they replayed it at a later hour. It was quite lovely!

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  4. I watched a goodly portion of the wedding. Then later last night watched the re-capp. I truly tried to stay up all night to watch the pre-wedding coverage and the live coverage but alas even with the encouragement of my husband who bought me vast amounts of sugary treats I could not keep my eyes open. I did see the carriage ride back to the palace, the kiss and the Aston-Martin ride however with my husband before he left for work. We were cheering them on for a long and happy marriage. May the newly wed military couple spend as many nights together as possible and very few apart. Being a military couple we understand the trials and tribulations they will have to endure to make this marriage last.

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  5. Limr - I know exactly what you mean, being contrary and refusing to follow along with the sheeple. On that principle, I refused to see Harry Potter until the third movie was already out, but then I read all the books and am now a huge fan. Sometimes the sheeple have it right.

    Of course, I saw Twilight once while visiting a friend. There's two hours of my life I'll never get back. I don't get it.

    The highlight of the wedding coverage, for me, was my husband's alternately hilarious and touching commentary on the wedding, the crowds and the British press. Definitely more fun than watching on my own.

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  6. Krysta - It seems you, along with a lot of others initially not that interested, were drawn in by the charm of the day. I read one comment on The Telegraph website where a Brit whose golf game was called off therefore ended up watching the wedding and the country's celebrations with his wife and found it entirely fantastic.

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  7. Rebecca - You are ambitious, attempting to stay up all night! If I hadn't have a good few hours of sleep before the ceremony I would never have made it either.

    It's nice that you and your husband were able to enjoy some of the coverage together - I'm sure you two do have a special understanding of the pressures a military career can place on a marriage.

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  8. So with you on the Twilight thing. My sister - my GROWN, OLDER THAN ME sister - bribed me to go see one of the movies with her. Damn my inability to resist free Talbots! She even made me promise - at the cost of an extra skirt - that I wouldn't make constant snarky comments on how Buffy would have kicked all of their asses by now ;)

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  9. Oh, limr, I heart U. You do make me laugh so. Nice work on negotiating the payment. I probably would have done it for a simple box of milk duds.

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  10. I'm afraid that I am both an Englishman and a Republican. I still can't believe that we once got rid of the Royal Family just to let them back in again!

    Although, I have to say that I did quite enjoy the coverage that I was forced to watch with my mother! They are clearly in love and I really do believe in marriage as an institution.

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  11. Spencer - Ah, well, royalist or republican, they say everybody loves a wedding, no?

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  12. Such a lovely image of you and D on the couch in the wee sma's!

    I didn't think I'd care that much about the Royal Wedding but I ended up watching it outside on a big screen and loving every minute (plus the chance it afforded me to have cake and gin in the am!). I think what I really enjoyed about it was they are so much in love, and it showed. I also like the fact that they had the traditional, formal ceremony in the morning but then had a more relaxed do that reflected their wants and desires in the evening. And the driving off in the Aston Martin was superb - as someone else said, it was the moment they stopped being the Royal couple and became a couple who had just got married.

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  13. Helen - I saw a fantastic Telegraph photo gallery of street parties across the country. You lot know seem to know how to have a good time. All the eccentric costumes made me proud to be an honorary related-by-marriage Brit! It's great you were actually out there to experience some of it.

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  14. Wait, you get to hear that British accent at any moment of the day?! Oh man...lucky girl!

    I loved the wedding and spend the night watching all of the bio shows leading up to the big event with my 14yr old daughter. We had an awesome time.

    I laughed, I cried - it was great!

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  15. Oh yes, Botut, that accent is simply delicious and never gets old. ;-)

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  16. Hi from Dallas, Texas. I know where the "JU5T WED" plate comes from! It's part of a ready-made decoration kit for wedding cars. I found it on eBay and on Amazon, from seller "WeLoveCards." They sell a pre-packaged kit that has the JU5T Wed plate, two L-plates (the EXACT one on the front of Kate and Wills' car), and some ribbons and bows. I think Harry added to the kit there, but the JU5T WED and the L-plates are the ones on the royal Aston... Just go to Amazon, then search for JU5T WED and the kit pops right up. You'll find them on eBay, too, but there are a lot of sellers who are selling variations on the JU5T WED plate. Only the one in that particular kit is the authentic and cheeky one!

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  17. I wasnt big on watching the actual wedding but i was wanting to see the frock so turned telly on to watch 5 mins before they got to the church and watched for the next hour. I have to say I loved hger dress too, simple elegant and classy.

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