However, every time a royal weds, the media reactions are more, well, let's call it "inspiring" than the event itself. No, dear press rabble, the groom hadn't been a waiter. No rags to riches story here. He is sheer and undiluted upper class and comes from more than one titled family.
Then there was the gushing over the bride and her dress. And no again, dear media mob, although she comes across as very nice, and her friends are credibly adamant that she is, not even they would call her beautiful or her appearance "stunning". (The worst thing is, that, so I suspect, those despicable jaundiced hacks are laughing their sorry arses off while gushing about her and at the same time opt for the most unflattering pictures available.)
Out of respect for the bride, here is the most flattering picture I was able to find.
To watch the unselfconcious and genuine happiness in her kind, open, face is touching. Like her mother's more than 30 years ago, hers was all about "her man".
Then there was the usual parade of glossy magazine scum and some highlights, mostly, but not exclusively, from the royal family. I confine myself for once to the nicer aspects of such a pageant, because there are more important things to come to later in this entry.
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| Her Majesty in powder blue, regal, dignified and beautiful as always. I like her pastel outfits best and she may have made a special effort to underline the importance of this wedding as a counterpoint to a royal wedding earlier that year. (I may be wrong.) |
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| The Princess Royal, aunt to the bride, with her husband Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence. I admire her for many things. Her dress sense is not among them. However, this is much less awful than her usual choice of wedding guest attire. |
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| This is Lady Sarah Chatto, first cousin, once removed to the bride. And no, scum shmoks, she's not Her Majesty's "favourite niece". She is her ONLY niece. (And one of the nicest members of the royal family who has always kept a low profile and who is a "working girl".) |
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| The Duchess of Cambridge, best dress, best smile, best legs, ray of sunshine, as usual. |
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| Mother and sister (and maid of honour) of the bride with the little bridesmaids and pageboys. Children are always "cute" (a word I normally dislike) and so are these, but the long trousers for the boys are a big no-no and deplorably suburban. (The matching colours of the children and MoB and MoH are nice though.) |
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| Oh look! A scene from "Roots"! |
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| The well-connected, stylish and beautiful Cressida Bonas, former girlfriend of Prince Harry. |
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| The younger branch of the Greek royal family. Couldn't be better. That's how "regal but modern" goes. Princess Olympia's dress is Dolce and Gabbana. |
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| Poppy Delevingne, another well-connected young woman, model and actress, and, so it used to be reported, another "romantic" (a word I hate even more than the word "cute") interest of the groom, in Oscar de la Renta. Absolutely stunning dress, pity for the daft "fascinator". |
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| Zara, Mrs. Michael Tindall, the Queen's granddaughter and cousin to the groom, with her rugger star husband. Nobody would neither her nor her mother accuse of being particularly well dressed, however, she is, like her mother used to be 40 years ago, one of the best three-day-event-riders of her generation and makes a living from it. |
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| Chelsy Davy, another one of Prince Harry's ex-girlfriends, and although she DOES come across as a bit, well, common, at least she's a lawyer now and not some tinpot American actress with a cringe-making background and a sleazy past. But don't get me started about those breast appliances. |
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| No, dear glossy magazine gutter scum, this is NOT Sofia Wellesley, the grand-daughter of the 8th Duke of Wellington, with some singer as her armpiece, this is James Blunt, an officer, gentleman and close friend of Prince Harry, who happens to be a singer now, with his wife Sofia Wellesley. Lovely dress for an autumn wedding, perfectly turned out couple! |
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| Undoubtedly the best-dressed attendant. I love it! |
That's it. I spare you the many other "celebs". They are either well-preserved but tend to hit their staff with bejewelled communication devices, depress me because they are my own age group but decrepit, or unknown to me. Let's talk instead a bit more about the efforts of the media hacks.
Magic Meghan was attenting as well
Imagine my surprise! Absolutely sensational! Shiver down my spine. Her husband is, after all, only first cousin to the bride.
Elitist Eugenie set strict rules for the wedding and had the cheek to even let them be known
Well... it WAS a royal wedding, wasn't it?
Demonic Duchess of Cornwall didn't attend because she had a tiff with "Fergie" in the early 14th century
Liar liar pants on fire!
It's a symptom for the zeitgeist, that it is impossible or almost impossible to find photos of the extended royal family who attended, for example the Earl and Countess of Snowdon, first cousin, once removed to the bride, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the bride's first cousin, twice removed and his wife, the Duke of Kent, the bride's first cousin, twice removed, or, from the Mountbatten family, the Marquess and Marchioness of Milford Haven, the bride’s third cousin and his wife. I came only by chance across the photos of Lady Sarah Chatto and the Greek royal family.
Too straightlaced? Not vulgar enough? Good God, some of them are even seriously working for their living (the Duke of Gloucester for example is an architect). How boring! I am hatching the pet theory that the mainstream (media and public) are only interested in royalty now if they are connected with glossy magazine scum. That would, too, explain the maniacal interest in the tinpot actress with a long history of riding the cock carousel who recently married into the family.
In an earlier entry I wrote:
This gushing approval of everything that goes against tradition, established, proven and tested values, dignity, common decency and good taste, THAT is the frightening bit.Some of my regular readers may wonder why I spared the mother of the bride. The explanation is easy. I am tired of shooting sitting ducks and frankly, hat and dress ARE nice, just worn by the wrong person.
Much, MUCH more interesting in this context is a look back at the past. During my research I came across the video below and was amazed how likeable and genuine the young Sarah Ferguson comes across in the pre-nuptial interview early in the video (13:41 - 16:43). But that's an upper class young lady for you who has attended finishing- but not "acting school", whatever hash she may have made later of her marriage.
Yes, nobody can deny that she is upper class. At that time she seemed the ideal choice as the wife for a son of Her Majesty the Queen. At that time, too, the first doubts about the Princess of Wales had gathered at the horizon. Sarah Ferguson was "worldly", yet a country girl with many common interests with many members of the royal family. Her father was Prince Charles' polo manager. She was goodlooking in a rather tomboy-ish sort of way, yet didn't have a smidgeon of the Princess of Wales' fateful star quality, all of which spoke for her.
I couldn't resist and watched most of the video, which was an eerie experience for somebody like me who isn't all that laid back about growing old. We saw a young-ish and beautiful Queen, we saw a dashing young Prince Charles, we saw a Prince Edward with a head still full of hair and an amazingly well dressed Princess Anne, we saw a mischievous Prince William (who hadn't quite the star quality his son George shows now) as a page boy and we saw the toddler Prince Harry on his mother's arm, we saw Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones (Chatto) and Zara Phillips (Tindall) as girl bridesmaids.
We saw those who are not with us anymore, the beloved Queen Mother, a very young and beautiful Princess Diana, Princess Margaret Rose, yet not quite so obviously marked by illness, and many more.
I re-played "God Save The Queen" at least three times.
And we saw what a nice young man Charles Althorp, now the Earl of Spencer, used to be. He co-commented the footage for an American station. (The fabulous hair seems to go in the family.) Alas, nobody would call him a nice old man now, which maybe can be seen as emblematic for the changing times.
Just a final thought about the disastrous marriages of two of Her Majesty the Queen's sons and the part the gutter press played in the drama. In the eyes of their mentally retarded readership, the wives had been "victims" of the oh-so-cold royal family, which they, adulteresses both, had left for a (and I quote) "more honest" life. Btw, both girls knew the royals and life in the royal family from an early age, both were only too happy to marry into it.
Methinks they were victims of quite a different sort of agents.
Sarah Ferguson, then thirteen, and her sister were dumped on their father when their mother bolted to marry an Argentinian polo playing grease ball, which earned her the not very original epithet "the bolter" among her peers, whereas the mother of Diana Spencer left her husband and her four children for the heir to a wallpaper fortune when Diana was four or five. The then Viscount Althorp eventually won a bitter custody battle over his children, in which his mother-in-law, Ruth Lady Fermoy, lady-in-waiting to Her Majesty the Queen Mother, testified against her daughter.
I rest my case.
