Prince William and Kate’s Royal Wedding: Why Fairytales are Not Free

The royal wedding for the Prince of Wales, and his fiancée, Kate Middleton, is approaching on Friday April 29 at Westminster Abbey, London.  It’s perhaps one of the most important national events of the decade, responsible for creating an empire of souvenirs, blogs, twitter updates, commemorative wedding stamps, and even a live video stream of the ceremony.

 

For the wedding ceremony, one orchestra, two fanfare teams and two choirs will perform the music (because why have one band when you can have five?)  The champagne reception will be held at Buckingham Palace, hosted by The Queen herself.  Her Majesty also has to give her formal consent for the marriage of the lovely couple, otherwise it is completely invalid.

 

Supposedly, Her Majesty The Queen is the most supportive person for the marriage because she wants Prince William to marry a woman he’s truly in love with, in order to avoid another “Prince Charles and Camilla” scandal. 

 

The couple’s dating history has been scrutinized by the media ever since it began. Prince William and Kate Middleton met in college at the University of St. Andrews in 2001. After six years of dating and plenty of complaints by Kate of media harassment, the love birds broke up.  They reunited and finally engaged in Kenya, South Africa in 2010, with Kate now wearing the late Princess Diana’s 18-carat sapphire engagement ring from 1981. At the time the ring cost £28,000 pounds, about $65,000 U.S. dollars, but today it’s worth an approximate $300,000.

 

Although it seems a little awkward that the future princess of Wales will be wearing the ring from a marriage that ended in an affair and death of the late princess of Wales, I guess it fits (no pun intended).  Actually, Middleton has been losing so much weight for the wedding that she’s had to get the ring resized.  But anyway, it’s unsurprising that Camilla feels more than a little awkward right now.

 

Although England may have been living in a dream fairytale for the last year since the engagement was announced, they won’t be quite so starry eyed when they couple leave for their honeymoon and the country gets hit with a $6.4 billion dollar bill for the wedding (yes, that’s how much it will cost Britain).  The country already has a financial deficit of $256 billion dollars, and on top of that, businesses across the nation will be shut down for the national holiday.  Kate’s family will foot part of the bill by paying $157,000, but surely this is only a small dent in the overpriced budget.

 

Maybe I’m scratching my head because I’m not a major follower of the Royal family and I live in a country that isn’t quite as fascinated with the couple as the Brits are.  All I know is that we are currently in the middle of a global economic crisis, and that there are few countries that are in any state to pay for such a lavish wedding. 

 

Historic or not, the royal participants should be just as inclined as any of us to pinch our pennies and not spend $50,000 on a wedding dress that will only be worn for a single day.  Thoughts, anyone?

 

No word has been given as to whether The Queen will be spending any of her £290 million pounds on the wedding, but why should she?  She needs to save for her retirement, after all.

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