The Purple Mango Post

ROYAL WEDDING!!!!!!!!!

If London's newspapers, TV news, store windows, billboards, pubs, restaurants and all other modes of public discourse could be summed up in a single phrase it would be:

ROYAL WEDDING!!!!!!!!!

When I found out that we needed to move to London just seven weeks after our daughter's birth (not a timeline I would recommend to anyone), the one thing that made me feel better was the knowledge that we'd arrive just in time for the royal wedding, or more specifically, just in time to see an entire country implode upon itself.

The royal wedding is tied into virtually every facet of English commercial life. One can buy royal wedding flags, bags, mugs, calendars, Halloween masks, china, commemorative coins, postcards, t-shirts and champagne. A friend brought one such bottle as an ironic birthday gift for my husband. The label reads only "Prince William Royal Wedding," with no mention of a specific bride or date, which makes me think that the bottles were churned out years in advance and have been sitting in a warehouse somewhere in Slough awaiting the announcement. Merchants near the procession route are eagerly anticipating the big day. "When Princess Diana died I was here for three days night and day serving ice cream," ice cream truck owner Rose Dervis told the Evening Standard. "I'm really looking forward to it."

No detail is too small for the London media to overlook. There is speculation about the flowers (rhododendrons!) and stories on the selection process for the horses used in the royal procession (which the stentorian gray-haired reporter called "something of a horsey 'X-Factor,'" I'm sure without an ounce of regret for the death of his dignity.) A newspaper reports the alarming fact that in case of an assassination attempt, one footman stationed on the newlywed's carriage a designated "bullet-catcher." One tabloid did a two-page photo spread on the hotel room in which Kate Middleton will spend her final night as a single woman - complete with close-up shot of the toilet in which the future queen will presumably relieve herself - and then BBC did a story on that story. Everyone wants to talk to John Loughrey, a Union Jack-clad man from Wandsworth who on Monday morning became the first well-wisher to camp along the procession route. The TV presenter described him as "a well-known royal fan," which I think is shorthand for anyone whose home address the Royal bodyguards have memorized.

Sky News keeps running a segment in which a tweedy man who pronounces "prin-CESS" the same way Will Ferrell said "hot-TUB" in the SNL skits leads us breathily on a tour of Westminster Abbey, noting a historical fact at each place the couple will stand. At Westminster Abbey, where the first royal wedding took place in 1100, this is a lot of history. A few weeks before my own wedding, I was watching a special on E! and was surprised to see the survivors of a satanic cult having a reunion at the southern California barn where I was about to be married, tearfully recollecting memories of animal sacrifices while standing in the gazebo where my husband-to-be and I were going to say our vows. So I pretty much know exactly how Catherine Middleton feels.

We live about 500 meters from St. Paul's Cathedral, the absolute perfect place to view the royal wedding - in 1981. This royal wedding, unfortunately, is all the way across town. And judging by the ominous warnings coming from London Transport, the city is preparing for crowds somewhere between a World's Fair and a food distribution at a refugee camp. Apparently, if you're not the type of person who would take your baby to the Running of the Bulls, you should also not take your baby to the royal wedding. So that's ok. I'll be watching it on the TV at home with my baby on my lap, just the way my mom did 30 years ago. Except this time, I'll be a little closer to the action.