Why I Care About the Royal Wedding

Over the past week, Facebook and Twitter have been bursting with comments, both good and bad, about the Royal Wedding. And it seems the US of A is split down the middle. I have a LOT of friends who couldn’t care less about today’s Royal nuptials. But I have just as many who, like me, got up hours before the sun to watch Wills & Kate tie the knot.

For me, this is a deep seeded "fascination" if you will, but not just of Prince William. It’s an obsession with Britain as a whole. I’ve always found the English to be so romantic and proper. I “mastered” the British accent in elementary school and often pretended I was British. (Yeah, I know, that’s probably weird. But I wanted to be an actress, so to me, practicing accents was tooootally normal.)

BUT, back to Wills. My bedroom walls were plastered with posters of “cute boys” from an early age. But none lasted the test of time like Prince William. Just ask my Mother. I think I was 11, maybe 12, the first time I hung a poster of the dashing Prince. And the collage à la Wills grew, updated and changed continuously until ALL the posters in my bedroom came down when I moved into my first apartment at 19. See, my 12 year old self truly believed that *I* could be Prince William’s wife someday. And come on. What girl doesn’t dream of being a real life princess when she grows up! I mean, his mother made it look so rewarding and glamorous to be a real princess. She got to do amazing charity work AND go to balls?! Sign me up!

This leads me to my next point. I LOVED Princess Diana. LOOOVED. In 3rd grade, for our annual “Parent’s Open House”, my teacher told us all we were to choose an icon in history and learn everything we could about that person. Then, for Open House, we would be dressing up like them, and doing presentations for the parents. I’m going to go ahead and let you guess who I picked - that’s right, Princess Diana. I poured over books about her, marveling, studying. My Mom let me wear my fancy Easter dress (complete with matching hat and gloves), my Sunday shoes and even took me to get my “hair done” like hers for the big night. I was SO proud as I told all the parents a million things they probably already knew about the Princess. Five years later, I also remember my Mom letting me get up in the middle of the night, and cry my eyes out, watching her funeral on TV. My love for William grew as I watched him walk in that tragic processional, being so brave.

But this is about a WEDDING! The happiest day of a girl’s life! (Until the birth of her children, I’m told.) I think by now I’ve proved my love for all things Royal and British. Even though I’ve never met Prince William, and probably never will, I still feel invested in his life somehow. (In Harry's too.) Like we’ve grown up together! So this morning, as I groggily turned on the TV just in time to see the gorgeous Kate take her first step into Westminster Abbey, I almost felt like I was at the wedding of a lifelong friend. And that, my friends, is why I care about the Royal Wedding.