Royal Wedding!

Source: Google Images

I'm a sucker for a royal wedding. I was in the 9th grade when I got up in the middle of the night to watch Princess Anne's wedding to Capt. Mark Phillips. (Goodness, I had to think awhile before I could pull that name out of the deep recesses of my mind.) It was a beautful wedding, but the marriage didn't turn out so well.

Eight years later, I got up in the middle of the night to watch Lady Diana Spencer marry Prince Charles. The wedding didn't disappoint. Diana's dress was truly fit for a princess, and the scale of the event was beyond any fairytale that I ever read. But as everyone knows, that marriage didn't turn out so well, either.

Source: Google Images

Five years after that, I got up in the middle of the night to watch the wedding of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew. Yeah, well...

Prince Edward is still married, isnt' he? I feel sure that I got in the middle of the night for that wedding, too, but I really don't remember for sure. You see, by the time Edward married Sophie Rhys-Jones, I didn't have much hope for royal marriages...certainly not for the marriages of Queen Elizabeth's children.

I have much more hope for William and Kate. They're mature enough to know themselves, and they've certainly dated long enough to know one another. I was initially a little creeped out by William's choice of a ring - the same sapphire ring that we first saw on Diana's finger nearly 30 years ago, but I love his sentimental reason for choosing it. "It was my way of making sure my mother didn't miss out on today and the excitement, and the fact that we're going to spend the rest of our lives together." William says that their relationship began as a friendship, providing a strong foundation for them.

We were already rooting for them just from the pictures we had seen, but they were terribly endearing in their engagement interview. Their excitement is obvious, as is their love for one another. While Diana was clearly infatuated with Charles, I'm not sure she ever loved him, and he certainly didn't seem to love her. Remember Charles' comment in their engagement interview? As I recall, when asked if they loved one another, Charles' response was something like, "Whatever love is." Ouch.

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Despite the mean tone of the nickname given to Kate by the press, Waity Katie, perhaps she was willing to wait so long because she learned something from her future father-in-law's life. Charles, too, had a difficult time committing to a young woman he dated, and she eventually tired of waiting and married someone else. While Charles and Camilla married many years later - after a failed first marriage for each - I can't help but wonder how much heartache could have been avoided if Camilla had shown Kate's patience when she was younger. But then if Camilla had been a patient woman, there wouldn't have been a William for Kate to marry, would there?

I hope that despite the ups and downs that Kate and William will undoubtedly face in their life together, that their marriage will survive, and they will look back and feel as though they each received the fairy-tale ending that so eluded all those other royal couples...

Until next time,
Margaret

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ~ I Corinthians 13:4-7