Prince William and Kate Middleton, by UK_repsome under Creative Commons Attribution License
So I did it. I decided to stay up to watch the wedding. My exams are finished and I’m off tomorrow, so I thought, why not? Here’s a running commentary of thoughts (will be updated for as long as I stay awake):
12:56: Oh, goodness, they’re displaying some poor sap readying the balcony for William and Kate’s first kiss after the wedding. Oh mainstream media, you really love to discuss every detail in excruciating detail…
12: 57: I think they’ve mentioned the words “Princess Diana” more than a dozen times since I first tuned in.
1:01: Apparently people have gathered outside the Palace for DAYS to see this wedding. That’s gotta be worse than staying up to watch it, right?
1:04: Kate’s gown was designed by a “mystery woman in a big fur trapper’s hat.” Sounds like someone I’d want to design my wedding dress.
1:15: Some of the people in the crowd are wearing Burger King crowns. Burger King, Crown Jewels… not much difference between them at all.
1:20: Apparently William and Kate are to live with Charles and Camilla after the wedding. After marrying into royalty, you still have to live with the in-laws?
1:25: A regular suit isn’t good enough for the British PM to wear when attending. He’s been pressured to wear a tuxedo.
1:30: Why are there orange balloons? Are they secretly Dutch?
1:35: I’ve never been 2 ½ hours early for a wedding in my life. Or even early for a wedding. But the guests are already lining up.
1:37: Folding chairs! Westminster Abbey has folding chairs. Also – trees.
1:40: Kate will be the first Queen to have gone to university. Bit behind the times, the monarchy.
1: 44: Obligatory Diana montage…
1:56: “The monarchy depends on this.” No pressure or anything.
2:15: Kate Middleton’s family is from Bucklebury. Wasn’t that town’s name in Lord of the Rings?
2:24: Peter Mansbridge’s eyes are getting more and more bloodshot as the night goes on. And he seems particularly bemused about people’s obsession with Kate’s wedding dress…
2:32: William used to have such 1990s hair. Of course, now he has almost no hair. 🙂
2:43: There’s female guest with a hat that looks exactly like a canoe landed nose down on her head.
2:49: Bucklebury even looks like it belongs in Lord of the Rings. Thatched roofs, cobblestones, tree-lined alleys. All they need is some hobbits.
2:52: Canada is giving William and Kate hiking gear. Hiking gear. Can you see Kate climbing up a mountain?
3:04: There’s group on the street wearing William and Kate masks, and the reporter just asked them to kiss. Very odd to watch, especially if you’re sleep-deprived.
3:19: Now you can see Prince Harry teasing Prince William as they walk into Westminster Abbey.
3:34: Kate’s mother walks in, in a light grey dress by Catherine Walker – elegant, yet quite typically mother-of-the-bride-like.
3:44: Camilla’s dress has very odd pleats. The Queen is wearing school-bus yellow (apparently she bought three outfits and picked one according to the weather). Yes, I care about fashion.
3:49: The Queen gets a trumpet fanfare as she walks in the Abbey. I thought that only happened in movies?
3:54: GORGEOUS! From what I can see, Kate’s dress is gorgeous. An elegant lace over-lay and a sweet-heart neckline – reminiscent of Grace Kelly’s wedding dress…
4:01: Oh beautiful, exactly like Grace Kelly, but modernized. Pippa, her maid of honour, has a lovely dress too.
4:08: William has to stand with his back to the aisle for some reason. He peeks over his shoulder…
Sweeping views of the gothic cathedrals… Soaring music…
The couple smiles at each other, standing shoulder-to-shoulder.
4:14: The Anglican wedding ceremony is very beautiful. Here comes the “speak now or forever hold your peace” part. Awkward silence.
4:19: “Those whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”
4:40: And they are married. The choir sings very well.
4:42: Yawn. And now, having witnessed this happy moment, I think I will go to bed. They still have to walk down the aisle and wave to all the crowds (and possibly kiss on the balcony), but I believe this has covered most of the (not so) important bits…
Good night!
UPDATE: Here are some interesting links:
Kate’s Dress! That Queen! Those Hats (from Slate, includes slideshow)
Royal Wedding on TV: Spouting Nonsense at 4am (someone else’s view on staying up late, and the media frenzy around the wedding)
Hmm... 
What a beautiful wedding. Here`s hoping they can pull off the unbelievable and make a change for the better.
I think from watching interviews that they may actually bring a much needed youth to the British Monarch.
I look forward to the new change and hope the world can work together and follow there lead.
We are in a whole new era with bigger world disasters and need to put aside the wars, nuclear issues, and threats to global peace. If countries could give up all that military spending we could create a healthy and happy world. Let`s work together and stop the wars and promote peace and harmony.
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Please have a look if you are interested in online shopping. Thanks and god bless.
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Harma….I am delighted by your commentary of the whole affair. I love weddings…an incurable romantic at heart! Anyway…it was wonderful to hear your side of things. Thank you so much for stopping by and checking on my blog. Yes, I try to tie things to my faith as the Lord leads….and I love politics and history too…from a Christian perspective. It is a pleasure to meet you! Blessings!
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Thanks for visiting! Glad you enjoyed the post… I’m definitely discovering how much of a romantic at heart I am as well!
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Since I didn’t watch any of it this might be a good substitute:)
And to Andy: a happy world can only come about through through Jesus Christ, who paid off the debt WE should, but can not pay. Becuase of this we have access to God, who after all created all of us, who loves us, who will bring about a better, perfect world, whether we believe it or not. God bless you, too, Andy.
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I didn’t watch but I’ve seen so many videos of it on tv that it certainly feels like I did. Yesterday was Prince Albert of Monaco’s wedding. This week everyone apparently thought his bride had run away but nope, she was there and I wonder if they did a Grace Kelly montage. Is it just me or is showing pictures of your dead mother at your wedding kinda sweet but also really depressing ?
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I didn’t know Prince Albert got married too! Knowing the media, they probably did do a Grace Kelly montage. It’s somewhat depressing, but I think most people do remember their mother, or whoever passed away, at a time like a wedding.
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Oh yeah he did, to a woman he’s been living with for the past eleven years. He wanted a child that could actually be his heir so that explains the wedding… Noo I’m not cynical ! They actually did a Grace Kelly montage, I saw that on the news (there’s no escaping it – that and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, maybe you’ve heard of him ?).
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I’ve heard about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but just a little. You probably hear more. 🙂
Yeah, wanting a legitimate heir is probably the explanation. Was she a commoner, like Kate, or did she have aristocratic blood?
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Oh yes, I hear a lot about it – and I don’t even watch the news, it’s just everywhere. The Socialists are jumping around this past few days, their hero is free yeah… And Sarkozy’s party must not be happy – they still have their rapist. Is politic that important in your country ? That’s all we hear about here…
No, she was a commoner too. She actually is a former swimmer, they met at the Olympic Games in Sydney.
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Interesting!
Politics isn’t too important here – everyone just complains a lot because no one ever seems to get what they want. And some people think it’s boring compared to American politics, but I’m glad we don’t have American-style politics here. Most people my age aren’t interested in politics at all, but I like to keep up with what’s happening.
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I’m confused, what’s American-style politics ?
It’s a big deal here, and people my age really throw themselves in it now. But it’s just such a mess that right now we must have 30 candidates for the elections next year.
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In America, most people either support the Democrat party, or the Republicans, and the parties really don’t like each other. In Canada, there’s more parties to vote for, and people might switch who they vote for more. Also, in America you vote for the president personally. In Canada, you vote for the party, and whoever the leader of the party that wins happens to be becomes the president. So our political debates are a little more… polite? (They still insult each other, but not in the same way). Also, while our media might be a bit biased to one party or the other, we don’t have one station that blatantly endorses one party, while another station promotes another party.
Is that 30 candidates to be president? That’s a lot.
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You’re very luck cause we have a lot of parties but they still don’t like each other. Most of them hate nationalists though, so they do agree on something.
Our political debates have become more you know… more of a show-off, they argue but it’s not like in the 80’s when they were at each other’s throats and really said what they meant. Now you ask them a question and when their speach is over no one can remember what the question was.
That is a lot, but 10 are actually Socialists so they’ll have to vote to decide who gets to be candidate. Otherwise there are the ecologists, democrats, communists (yup, still there), anarchists, nationalists, and all the candidates that don’t really fit in any party.
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Your debates sound like ours – they never say what they really mean, and you don’t remember their answer afterwards. Also, you could probably predict a general idea of where they stand on each question beforehand. The politicians treat it like a big show, but there’s a lot of people who don’t watch and don’t care.
There’s only five “official” parties here that actually have seats, and a bunch of tiny parties that no one really hears about.
There’s a Communist party here too, but it’s one of the tiny ones that never gets voted in.
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Our Communist party never gets voted in but you hear a lot about them anyways. I think they still hope they can go back to the times where they were one of the most importants parties of the country.
The funny thing is that there are three big parties, the Socialists, the erm Sarkozysts (I guess they’re the Republicans/Capitalists, but no one calls them that – they’re the “right” and the Socialists the “left”), and the Nationalists, but the Nationalists, who have 20% of the votes, never got seats. They were always pushed aside. I think if the governement hadn’t turned them into such outsiders, they wouldn’t be so attractive to a youth who doesn’t believe in the system anymore.
And here we watch and we care, politics are our reality tv. There’s always a huge scandal (or not that huge, but they make it look huge) and debates, especially a year away from the elections. Recently a man grabbed the arm of Sarkozy and he’s looking to six months of prison, so it suscitates many debates. Our humorists love politics, they always have material for their sketches.
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Wow, politics does sound like quite a big thing there!
20% of the vote is quite a lot, to never get any seats. We have that a little bit here – a party with an okay percentage of votes doesn’t get a seat because of how the ridings are divided up. But I’m not sure if they’ve ever gotten 20% of the vote.
Here we have the Conservatives (right), Liberals (central, slightly to the left), New Democratic Party (left), Greens (very left), and the Bloc Quebecois (only runs in Quebec, and promotes the interests of Quebec in the government).
Tiny parties are the Communists, the Marxist-Leninists, Christian Heritage Party, the Marijuana Party, and some other ones.
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