image of Royal wedding London 2011

Despite my committed republicanism, I do like a prince. What girl doesn’t? So when I found myself in London on the occasion of the last big royal wedding (the one when William married Kate), my English friend Karen and I decided to join in.

We added ourselves to the hundreds of thousands of people lining the streets of London on 29 April 2011 to see what all the fuss was about.

Royal watching is a phenomenon I don’t quite understand. There were people who had camped out for days to get a good spot to catch a fleeting glimpse of the Windors on their way to church. Well bugger that. Getting up at 5 am was bad enough, especially after being kept awake half the night as I was by helicopters circling my central London hotel.

We staked our claim on The Mall around 6.30 am and there we stood there for over six hours. To fill the time before something actually happened, we exchanged friendly banter with our fellow royal watchers. I enjoyed the camaraderie among the other silly people who thought this was a great way to spend their day. We shared stories and information with others around us – or rather they shared with us because we had nothing to offer.

Excitement began to build as the main event drew nearer. A lady standing near us was getting information from her son who was at home watching on TV. He was taking photos of the TV screen and sending them to her mobile phone, giving vital advanced information as the key players came closer. A man had the BBC radio coverage on his iPod. Through these crowd colleagues we received such vital pieces of wedding intelligence as “the Queen has got in her car.” “The car is moving now”. “It’s turning into the Mall.”

Image of crowd lining streets in London for wedding or Prince William
Royal watching from four deep in a big crowd is hard

I asked someone what must have seemed a rookie, Colonial query: “How will I know when it’s the Queen’s car that’s coming?”

“Just look out for the old lady dressed all in yellow. That will be the her,” he replied.

Royal watching from four deep in a big crowd isn’t easy when you stand at 1.58 metres tall. While waiting for a glimpse of Her Maj I began to hear in my head the poem I liked as a child. You know the one about changing guard at Buckingham Palace, Christopher Robin went down with Alice, They looked for the Queen but she never came… etc. etc.?

Well I looked. She came. And I couldn’t see a thing. As Her Maj sped by en route to Westminster Abbey all I saw was a speeding motorbike cop and a blur of black limousine. Karen (to my left) said she got a good look at her. A man (to my right) snapped a photo. He showed it to me. It was a good shot. Unmistakably the Queen and they were right – she was all in yellow.

After more than four hours of standing in a space that often shrunk to the size of an A4 piece of paper as everyone crowded around, my tally of royal sightings amounted to this:

  • Prince William’s gloved hand and the cuff of his red jacket as and possibly Prince Harry’s black clad shoulder as their car went by. But it’s hard to tell whose cuff it was as they both had red bits on their jackets.
  • Some brown hair and part of a blue outfit that may have belonged to Princess Eugenie although this cannot be confirmed
  • A brief glimpse of the bride to be and her father on the way to church viewed in my camera’s view finder while taking a ‘hail Mary’ photo (one where you hold the camera up as high as possible in the air, click the button and hope it took a picture of something).

On the return journey from the Abbey to the Palace following the ceremony, apparently five horse-drawn carriages containing the newlyweds and other royals passed within five to ten metres of where I stood. I saw one. I got a very brief but clear view of the carriage carrying Pippa Middleton and the young bridesmaids. When the Queen came by for the second time, I saw the gold flouncy bit on top of her carriage. No Queen. Other than that I saw lots of the legs and bums of horses.

Mostly what I saw was the backs of people in front of me and their damnable little union flags. Just as I would position myself at a window I’d found between someone’s legs, over a shoulder or under an armpit to establish a line of sight to the procession route, the sound of approaching horses would trigger the mob to raise and flourish the stupid little flags and slam shut my window of opportunity to see something more interesting than a horse’s arse.

After more than six hours of union flag fuelled frustration, we joined the crowd making the traditional procession down The Mall to Buckingham Palace to see the famed “balcony scene” where the whole royal family would appear and the newlyweds would kiss for the adoring crowd. My last chance.

 

Image of crowd outside Buckingham Palace 29 April 2011
Thanks to a television broadcast structure, I couldn’t see the balcony scene either

We got onto the big roundabout in front of Buckingham Palace but a television broadcast tower had been constructed next to the Queen Victoria monument ensuring that of the 500,000 people in the Mall, about 500 could actually see the balcony. But we could hear the cheer and saw the aircraft flyover, which signaled my big day out royal spotting was done.

After all that I’ve still never seen a member of the royal family except on TV or in a magazine. Surely a single jacket cuff can’t count?

Later as we reflected on our day over a nice meal in a Thai restaurant near the Palace, Karen speculated that she didn’t think there’ll be another big fuss royal wedding like that again until any future child of Wills and Kate gets married or maybe Harry gets a big deal wedding. I figured it highly likely that next time I’ll be watching on TV from the other side of the world.

And so it has come to pass.

Why I’ve not bothered to go to London to see the royal wedding
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