The Trouble with Royal Weddings

Royal weddings excite the masses, even in this long-lost colony, and even the classes. A surprising number have a craving for pomp and circumstance, and the homey, back-of-the-house type glimpses of the Royals, themselves.

Royal weddings leave me cold, royal gossip does not interest me in the slightest. However, royal weddings, royal this's and royal that’s's do play important political roles.

For example, as style-setters, royal weddings promote the "wedding industry," which pushes cookie-cutter weddings that are way too expensive for most young couples, or their usually strapped parents. The extravagance of the royal wedding this Friday will be recreated thousands of times in imitation over the next few years. And Americans, as well as Brits, Canadians and so on, will want to emulate the winsome couple--to the distress of their bank accounts, which are nowhere near as substantial as Prince William's.

The British Royals are very wealthy, very upper-caste, very white and pretty boring--on purpose, now, after Diana. Their lifestyle is not one most people can afford, but people want to emulate it. To me, that's unfortunate. One example of this unconscious emulation are the sweeping lawns in suburbs and exurbs here--no one mowed lawns until they got a gander at the aristocratic piles in Britain, with broad sweeps of what the British called "shaved grass." Those expanses, and the aped expanses here (where a man sits on a $5000 mower and mows for hours), are simply extravagance, lands that could be used for pasture, vegetables or allowed to grow wild. At Buckingham Palace, goes the story, an admiring American tourist asked a gardener, "How do you grow such a beautiful lawn?" The answer: "Oh, it's easy, Sir. Just keep mowing it for 300 years." I should add: English rain probably helps a lot, too: lawns in Britain, maybe, but in Arizona?

The left wing of the Labour Party wanted to abolish the monarchy until recently. The royals, they argued, epitomize the old class system in which a few are extremely wealthy and the rest may even be poor, but are grateful to the few for their spectacle. Monarchy popularizes a retrograde class system.

My daughter got married on April Fools; she and her groom were married at his mother's smallish house, in the back yard--in costume. Family and friends pitched in to carve hors-d'oeuvres or arrange trays. Everyone wore zany costumes: I was a Roman Senator. I've been to many weddings--my wife, as interfaith minister, officiated at many--but this was the most fun and memorable I've seen. The wedding cost about $1,500.

Too bad Darshann and Peter couldn't be models, instead of Kate and William. A lot of young couples would avoid incurring huge debts. And the elites wouldn't be even more emboldened to act like British aristocracy--which modeled itself after Roman Senators.