NOT a Royal Wedding

Yesterday, curled up in a big comfy chair in our spare bedroom, the Blue Room as we call it (which does sound a bit as if it is off in the West Wing of our Royal Residence, doesn’t it?) working away while the snow melted from the skylight, I got temporarily distracted by a video about the mailing of the Royal Wedding Invitations.  Supposedly the Queen (of England) mailed out 1900 of the gilded and embossed “ensembles” to all sorts of lucky duckies (ours has not arrived, just so you know.)  I couldn’t help but compare and contrast like a good English major, Prince William’s and Kate Middleton’s affair with ours!

Well, of course, ours is NOT a Royal Wedding and we are NOT young royal glamourpusses (I’ve always wanted to use that term in a piece of writing!) We are not sending out 1900 invitations but instead, wrestled and wrangled over the 70 we are sending out.  I am actually a grateful American in that the Queen didn’t choose the guest list and all our plans don’t have to be filtered through a committee of etiquette-os and public relations experts.  I am likewise thankful that we get to have our one reception instead of a stuffy gilded luncheon, followed by ANOTHER dinner reception.  Who foots the bill for all this receptioning?  The Royal Family?  The taxpayers of the United Kingdom?  Who has to light all those candles and arrange all those flowers? Alas, our budget is one we are managing on our own.

I see how the excitement is building.  People seem to be fascinated by the glamorous and the lovely; or maybe everyone just loves a good, hetero romantic storyline.  I’m old enough to remember getting up at the crack of dawn as a teenager to watch Lady Di marry Prince Chuck and wondering if she had to wear that big poofy dress ALL day?  A generation later and some things have changed while others have not.  We all still believe in romance despite the divorce of a princess (along with the divorces of more than half the people we all know personally.)  I cannot help but get caught up in it a bit myself, after all marriages are about hope and commitment; most of us have the best of intentions when we walk down the aisle (or across the yard as my son and I joke) and say ‘I will.”