Isn’t every wedding a royal one?
Remember the time on the way to your wedding that the massive crowds lining the procession route were cheering and weeping with joy? And the Archbishop of Canterbury was waiting in all his ornamental finery to officiate? And the last guest to arrive was Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II? Nope. But it was still the most wonderful wedding in the world, right?
Every detail you planned — that mini jar of homemade jam at each guest’s place, or the first rollicking country wedding dance to “You Are My Sunshine,” or the fact that you asked your two beloved grandmothers to be the flower “girls” tossing rose petals as they carefully made their way up the aisle — was beyond lovely.
Even though snooty wedding planners are now saying wildflowers in mason jars are so over, you wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Let’s face it. Every wedding is a royal wedding.
Nothing, including feminism, economic downturns and unpredictable cultural trends, seem to have made a dent in the irrational urge of even very rational sophisticated and smart women to spend a small fortune on their own weddings just so they can feel like a princess for a day.
Most of us have, at one time or another, been sucked into the white lace vortex.
So why wouldn’t a wide swath of society be glued to the upcoming royal nuptials between a real Prince — Harry, who is now safely so far down the succession chain to the British throne he’s no longer even considered a “spare,” and Ms. Meghan Markle, actress, philanthropist, and just a little bit daring poster girl for the 21st century monarchy — American, divorced, biracial and successful “in her own right,” as that anachronistic phrase would have it.
Of course we’ll watch on May 19, even though we know we’re being manipulated in countless ways to do so.
We’re not stupid. We do realize that the unparalleled pageantry of a gorgeous Royal Wedding beamed around the world to billions of sleep-deprived viewers — the most avid of them wearing their own fine fascinators and ostentatiously drinking sparkling wine — is, along with the birth of yet more royal progeny, a surefire way to ensure, or at least prolong, the stability and popularity of the British monarchy.
In short, don’t ask for whom those royal wedding bells toll — they toll for “we.”
Personally I find the lacy white avalanche of royal wedding details — both speculative and real — to be … irritating. There’s the countdown clock. There’s the pivotal issue that keeps some sub editor up at night: “Will Meghan wear a tiara?”
And, as a recent mother of the bride myself, fretting ridiculously over my appearance, there’s the question that truly interests me: will Meghan’s social worker mother Doria Ragland, about whom Meghan has blogged with adoration — “You will look at her and you will feel joy. I’m talking about my mom.” — sport her nose ring? I certainly hope so, because that’s a first for the mother of a royal bride.
I am not so captivated by the issuance of “the Royal Wedding commemorative coin” by the British Mint. Of course the only notable coin for all of our own royal weddings is the serious coin needed to pay for them.
Do we want to ruin the mood and delve more into cost here — what, are we now hearing a reported $50 million for that wedding, much of which apparently goes to security. Yes it is obscene. But then, so is the average $30,000 plus which is what many Canadian weddings apparently now cost.
After I wrote about our daughter’s charmingly rustic wedding in the Normandy countryside nearly three years ago, an irate reader recently wrote to chastise me for a political opinion and sneered for good measure that I was an “elitist” who had bragged about an extravagant French wedding.
I emailed him back to say crisply that our daughter’s wedding, a do-it-toimeme shindig in which the groom’s lovely French parents made all the flower arrangements, cost far less than a similar wedding here. To my surprise, he apologized.
Weddings can fuel all sorts of umbrage, from those who assumed they would be invited (sorry not sorry, Donald Trump) to crazy bad speeches that take years to get over.
The actual events have always been a flower- drenched hybrid of a Broadway show, a high school pageant, and a magnificent dream that glides, as the bride is supposed to, right up to the edge of being perfect and then in memorable ways, misses the mark. I’m sure it was Tolstoy who said: “Every slightly botched wedding is slightly botched in its own way.” Or he should have.
At my wedding, the delicious carrot cake decorated with lilies drooped alarmingly to one side in the July warmth of the roof of Toronto’s former Park Plaza Hotel. More than three decades later, my mother-in-law, 91, still laughs about it.
I prefer to remember two very different families coming together in love and hope to celebrate and support my husband and me as we embarked on what my long gone great-uncle Tom called “one of life’s greatest adventures.”
Whether in a castle or a backyard, it’s always been thus. A successful marriage is the real crowning achievement. And weddings? They still remain our relatively modest way to feel royal for a day.
On to May 19. Cue the royal splendour. And let us all eat “lemon elderflower wedding cake that incorporates the bright flavours of spring.”