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I didn't get up early to watch Kate and Wills get hitched. I didn't get up early for Wills' mum and dad either. I'll admit to some interest, mostly in the pomp and pageantry and the amazing hats British women wear to occasions like this, but not enough to get me out of bed early.
Princess Diana was only a couple of weeks younger than me. I remember thinking "Is she crazy?" while the frenzy about her wedding was happening. I couldn't imagine getting married at 19, with so much of life in front of me, so many possibilities. I thought her dress looked too big for her, overwhelming, as if it was swallowing her up, which seems oddly appropriate in retrospect.
Marrying into the British royal family is a scary business. You're not just marrying a person, you're marrying a family business, a role, a job, and a thundering weight of tradition. Diana was young and naïve enough to believe in fairytales and happy-ever-after, and so with no real relationship experience, she married a man much older than her, someone she barely knew. She didn't stand a chance.
Getting married is a project, an event that lasts a day. There's a whole industry devoted to helping you do it, as elaborately and expensively as you can stand. Being married, and staying married, is far more complicated. You have to keep doing it as well as you can every single day.
At least Kate (now HRH the Duchess of Cambridge) knows what she's getting into. She's had eight years to get to know not only her prince, but his family and their expectations.
I watched the video of their vows. I saw the glances they gave each other, the little smiles. It looks as if they know each other and genuinely like each other, and really, honestly, love one another.
I hope they do, and I hope they can hold onto that, through the enormous pressure that being part of a huge, demanding, rule-bound family business can generate, and through all the little issues and crazymaking arguments that even a good marriage endures. Being ridiculously rich and having lifelong job security will help, but it's not a job they can ever quit, and they'll never be free frin security guards and cameras and criticism from people who don't know them.
I hope they can make a life together where they can, at least sometimes, be Kate and Wills, two kids who met in college and took eight years to grow up and be ready before they took the plunge, and got married because they couldn't stand the idea of not being together.
I wish them luck.
Princess Diana was only a couple of weeks younger than me. I remember thinking "Is she crazy?" while the frenzy about her wedding was happening. I couldn't imagine getting married at 19, with so much of life in front of me, so many possibilities. I thought her dress looked too big for her, overwhelming, as if it was swallowing her up, which seems oddly appropriate in retrospect.
Marrying into the British royal family is a scary business. You're not just marrying a person, you're marrying a family business, a role, a job, and a thundering weight of tradition. Diana was young and naïve enough to believe in fairytales and happy-ever-after, and so with no real relationship experience, she married a man much older than her, someone she barely knew. She didn't stand a chance.
Getting married is a project, an event that lasts a day. There's a whole industry devoted to helping you do it, as elaborately and expensively as you can stand. Being married, and staying married, is far more complicated. You have to keep doing it as well as you can every single day.
At least Kate (now HRH the Duchess of Cambridge) knows what she's getting into. She's had eight years to get to know not only her prince, but his family and their expectations.
I watched the video of their vows. I saw the glances they gave each other, the little smiles. It looks as if they know each other and genuinely like each other, and really, honestly, love one another.
I hope they do, and I hope they can hold onto that, through the enormous pressure that being part of a huge, demanding, rule-bound family business can generate, and through all the little issues and crazymaking arguments that even a good marriage endures. Being ridiculously rich and having lifelong job security will help, but it's not a job they can ever quit, and they'll never be free frin security guards and cameras and criticism from people who don't know them.
I hope they can make a life together where they can, at least sometimes, be Kate and Wills, two kids who met in college and took eight years to grow up and be ready before they took the plunge, and got married because they couldn't stand the idea of not being together.
I wish them luck.
