The Royal Cup-ple

Today I swapped my morning cup of tea from my usual Wonder Woman mug into something much more extraordinary: 

The Royal Cup-ple. (Well, half of it)

In celebration of today – the day that our great nation's hope for a modern monarchy, Prince William Arthur Phillip Louis of Wales married commoner/'fashion icon' Catherine Elizabeth Middleton – I ate brunch. To be honest I like brunch to mark many occasions, however this one was made extra special: I wore a dress at 9am in my living room, I drank champagne at 10am, and I plated the brunch on only my finest Royal Doulton china. It was remarkably quite a nice and pleasant way to mark the morning’s event. 

However there were a few things I learned along the way: 

1)      Never, shall I again open champagne in the manner that I did. It did not spill everywhere, but was in general a rather unladylike approach to the task. 

Most undignified

2)      There was too much food for two people. 

Royal Brunch

3)      I know more about waving than the newly anointed Duchess of Cambridge.

4)      Apparently I know ‘too much’ about the British Royal Family. 

I think that the first two points are fairly explicable by the photographic evidence, but I think it might be worth me commenting on (3) and (4): 

A friend of mine – well a ‘celebrity’ friend of mine I suppose he now is – Mr. William Hanson is the youngest etiquette expert in Britain and he knows a thing or two about these sorts of protocols. As I write, he is covering the royal wedding for the day with an incredible amount of enthusiasm which one can only expect of a young man who teaches people how to be refined as his day job – so, quite a lot I can only imagine. However, as a prelude to the wedding celebrations William was invited to be the ‘Mystery Guest’ on the BBC3 Television show ‘Russell Howard’s Good News’. For those that have never seen the show the premise of the segment is simple – the host has to guess who the mystery guest (someone from the recent news) is. And because William’s the youngest of the nations experts there had been some press about him.*

I somehow don’t think that I can do the clip of William much justice as it was about the etiquette of waving and that’s a rather physical thing, but the point was that when asked to wave - he host was a bit too vigorous, or ‘ferocious’ to use William’s words. After showing the audience a more polished wave, I’d learned my lesson and I had royal waving down! However it would seem that one such royal-to-be had either not quite gotten that lesson on the day or had just not showed up entirely. I realised right away that she was doing it too ferociously and jokingly mocked her for it for all of five minutes.

 As to point (4) This fact was brought to my attention by my friend Georgia during a several hour stint in front of the television this morning, waiting to see what would happen during today’s most anticipated event. I learned that not everyone has the same depth of knowledge about the Queen and her extended family as was pointed out to me during a moment when I commented on the event. In between pretending to be Kate by declaring 'Pippa, my train!' every five minutes and trying to lip read what dignitaries and the like were saying, this occurred:

Me: ‘Oh look, there’s Lady Louise Windsor’ (The daughter of Prince Edward - she was a bridesmaid fyi)

Georgia: ‘Who?’

This response made me realize that while I believe that Georgia should perhaps have known more, I probably should get my head out of books on the monarchy and go get a life. 

*For those that who are in Britain and would like to watch RHGN, the episode can be found here.