The wedding guests are packed shoulder to shoulder waiting for the bride to appear. "Harry looks so cute!" one woman gushes over the best man, the groom's brother. She's fiddling with the large brim of her straw hat, trying to keep it from getting jostled off her head in the crowd.
"He could have used a haircut," says the woman next to her in a
similarly impractical and unnecessary hat. "If his mother were alive,
she'd have made him get a haircut."
"Too true," said the first woman, nodding her head knowingly.
On
the television screen, it's a gusty day in London but the sun is
holding out. Outside of the Kingshead Pub in south Florida, it's dark.
Of course, it's not quite six in the morning.
Barely caring about the wedding of two people thousands of miles away, I told my friend: "I wouldn't get up that early for my own wedding. To a prince!" Yet here I am. The end of the parking lot closest to the pub is packed with cars, including a Channel 10 news van.
Given the ungodly hour, I'm lucky my shirt isn't inside out, but the ladies here are dressed up as if they're actually attending the wedding. And they all talk as if they know the couple, the family, and all of the guests. People are drinking mimosas and Black Velvets -- Guinness and champagne. I stick with coffee and scones.
It's pretty clear the staff isn't used to handling this kind of customer load at 6 a.m. The server is running around in a top hat and coattails -- which go surprisingly well with his khaki cargo shorts -- taking orders and chatting up the patrons, uhh wedding guests.
"Awww!" I've never heard 65 people sigh in such perfect unison before. Kate Middleton has just emerged from her car in front of Westminster Abbey.
The news team has found the one woman in the room with a British accent
and as luck would have it, she's wearing a pretty awesome hat. On my
phone, I scroll through one article after another about the wedding and
all of them are being trolled by wedding bashers complaining about how
much media coverage it's getting, saying that nobody cares about two rich foreigners and their overpriced wedding.
"She's so beautiful!" My friends both have their hands plastered to their faces and are gazing up over me at the TV above my head. Their eyes are huge saucers swimming with tears. I don't consider myself too jaded and I definitely have a romantic streak buried deep in there somewhere, but I couldn't believe how enraptured they looked. "It's a real live fairy tale!"
I glance around and every other eye in the place has an unshed tear or
two. Even the Channel 10 camera woman has settled her equipment on her
hip for a minute while she stares wistfully up at the screen. Even the
men look like they could use a tissue!
Suddenly, the satellite goes out and for thirty seconds of scrambled
picture the voices build angrily. And just like that it's back. The
prince and his new princess are processing around the altar. Happy sighs
are heard all around. It's an emotional roller coaster in here! I order
more coffee.
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