So, after weeks of feeling mostly indifferent to the Royal Wedding I suddenly seem to have an opinion on it. I’ve struggled to care about it, having no emotional capital invested in ‘William and Kate’, but also couldn’t find it in me to be particularly cynical about the occasion itself or to view it as a reason to attack the monarchy. There are hundreds of other weddings happening today between couples I’ve not met, so why care about that one? But to use someone’s wedding day to raise issues of the relevance of the monarchy and the place they have in our country seems churlish.
I think the moment it suddenly got to me was seeing, on the BBC website, a picture of a couple of girls, in wedding dresses, beaming away and heading out to watch the wedding. They looked like they were going to a giggly fancy dress party, aware of the silliness of what they were doing but not caring at all because it’s fun. They didn’t look like die-hard monarchists or seem to be from the more eccentric end of Royal fandom. They had their own idea of what the royal wedding was about and that was what they were going to celebrate. Maybe they were dreaming of meeting their own princes (maybe they will today - how brilliant that would be!), maybe they’ll think about their own wedding day, maybe they’ll just have a fantastic time, buoyed by all that excitement and the camaraderie of the crowd. Anyway, I was suddenly touched by the whole day and the whole occasion.
I must admit that I did laugh and sneer at the people who’d come from New Zealand and Canada to watch the wedding when they were interviewed on television earlier this week. But other stories have seen people spending thousands on Olympic Games tickets which isn’t really any more worthy. And other large gatherings of people, at football matches this week, have been tinged with violence and the sort of hatred that leads to bombs being sent to prominent supporters of the opposing team. It’s a long way from the gentle eccentricity of the ‘united nations’ gathered outside Westminster Abbey. In this context spending all that time and money to celebrate the love of a young couple and to wish them happiness seems more understandable, noble even.
So I’m going to watch the wedding and I’ll drink a toast with my cup of tea to William and Kate. And I’ll be glad of all the people who’ve seen fit to travel to London from all over the world to be a part of this occasion. I’m sure that for some it’s about celebrating the monarchy, but I’m sure for many more people around the world it’s about more than that. They seem to be celebrating a symbol, not of monarchy but of love, of fairytales, of dreams and of happy endings. That seems worth celebrating to me. So let’s make this one couple an excuse to wish for joy for all of them. And let’s dream dreams of happiness today so that tomorrow we can work harder to make them happen.
David Millington
29th April 2011
Nottingham
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