For some reason, I’m a sucker for royal weddings and not just because of my ancestral ties to what people once referred to as the “mother country.” I love pomp and pageantry and the adherence to ancient traditions. I got up early to watch Charles and Diana get hitched and even when William and Pippa walked down the aisle. So, naturally, I was up at a ridiculous time on a Saturday morning to watch Harry and Meghan take their vows. The ceremony had a lot of the old traditions, to be sure. However, it also had a few American flourishes that the British Isles have never seen before.

An African American Bishop does the sermon

You could tell that this was to be a different kind of royal wedding when Michael Curry, an Episcopal Bishop preached a sermon filled with quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King and the Song of Solomon about the power of love. He had a lot to say about fire as well. The old church had never heard its like. Nor, I suspect, have any bride and groom walked out in procession to the singing of an excellent, old-fashioned gospel choir. As someone said, it was if the Atlantic Ocean had disappeared for just a few minutes of time.

The carriage procession

The carriage procession, that happened after the ceremony, was all British with the happy couple waving to the adoring crowd, the clop-clop of the cavalry accompaniment and the playing of marching bands.

The procession wound its way about Windsor Castle, which looked like a proper medieval fortress with tall, gray walls and soaring towers. The British, even after the Empire is long gone, excel in this sort of spectacle.

I also flashed back decades to my first international trip to the old country, back when the world was new and in the company of a young lady who, sadly, has gone on to the afterlife.

One of the features of our journey was a day trip to Windsor and a tour of the castle. We ran into a group of Civil War reenactors, by which I mean English Civil War reenactors, in period dress, carrying pikes and muskets and looking all ready to do Cavaliers against the Roundheads all over again.

There is a photograph somewhere of the young lady in question, leaning against a bronze statue of Queen Victoria, smiling, not a care in the world.

So must the happy couple have felt. However, marriage is a marathon and not a sprint. Happy are those who finish with death and not in divorce court. So a certain princess who must have celebrated her youngest son’s wedding in the afterlife would know only too well.
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