In the end, it was a grand, flawless wedding, rather relaxed by royal standards. With a couple of billion people watching, Prince William and Catherine Middleton were married at Westminster Abbey amid a winning mix of traditional pomp and circumstance and modern life.
For starters, the couple looked like a real couple, unlike William’s parents, Prince Charles and Diana, at their huge bash in 1981, who came across as the strangers they really were. William and Kate, in contrast, looked like a normal bride and groom in the year 2011. They had known each other for 10 years and, like countless other couples around the world, lived together before getting married. And, in another sign of the times, the bride’s family reportedly donated somewhere in the six figures to help defray the costs of the affair. To further link the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as they are now titled, with the rest of us, the Bishop of London said from the pulpit, “In a sense, every wedding is a royal wedding.’’
