Don’t get me wrong…I’m a total sucker for a good love story. But with all the sadness going on in the world, I just couldn’t seem to stir up any enthusiasm for The Royal Wedding. Oh, sure, I wished nothing but happiness for the handsome young prince and his beautiful bride-to-be, but only in a benevolently offhanded kind of way. And I wasn’t alone. I found my sense of apathy to be widely shared by most other members of my generation.
It’s not surprising that we had all grown a bit cynical since the last time the royals threw a wedding. In 1981, I didn’t miss a single moment of the pomp and circumstance that heralded the nuptials of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. My eyes came near to popping out of my rose-colored glasses as I watched the lovely Lady become a beautiful Princess. But in the intervening years since that ill-fated union, my rose-colored glasses had been misplaced. I had, in fact, come to the same conclusion as every other starry-eyed young lady of my generation:
Fairytale weddings might be real, but there is no such thing as a fairytale marriage.
Try telling that to young hearts; nah, you can't tell them anything. They don't listen to reason. And young hearts won't be bothered with worries about the infinite obstacles waiting to trip them up along the path to ‘happily ever after’...not when they are focused on fluffy white dresses and fondant covered cakes. There has never been a blushing bride who could possibly imagine how much there is to be done after she says ‘I do’. But indeed, life does happen. And much too soon after the top comes off the wedding cake, the fairy tale bride and her tuxedoed groom are forced to return to flesh and blood mortals. And we all know how messy mere mortals can be.
We quickly learn that wedded bliss hardly ever begins in a mortgage-free castle, but instead resides in a drafty apartment or a house filled with dust balls and a toilet that requires constant handle-jiggling. Before we know it, we find ourselves painfully giving birth to stretch marks and squealing babies who poop in their diapers, never sleep when we want them to, and generally wreak havoc on our routines. It’s all we can do to keep up...as those babies become children who pick their noses, skin their knees and bring notes home from school informing you of their bad behavior. Behavior obviously inherited from their Dad, the Handsome Prince. Who - by the way - now snores like a buzz saw, steals the covers and squeezes toothpaste from the wrong end of the tube. Hurrumph...
We no more begin adjusting to these annoyances before we start to wonder if our belief in ‘happily ever after’ has become nothing more than a lovely idea that has somehow been tossed into the same box as our fancy lingerie. The box that is awaiting donation to a women’s shelter.
The point is...even though your prince may have lost some of his charm, you still love him madly. Even so, you can’t help but wonder how your fairy tale wedding morphed into a marriage that has now become a crazed dance of coming together and pulling apart and twirling around and stepping on toes in a flurry of frenzy and breathless emotion all intertwined with love. The only constant through all the years is love.
So, there I was Friday morning…stumbling out of bed, donning my robe of diminished expectations as I begrudgingly tuned in to The Wedding. And there they were…smiling out at me in all their regal glory. The oh-so-handsome prince and his newly wedded bride. My heart began to melt as I saw Prince William now standing on the very same balcony where his mother had stood thirty years ago. The royal progeny of a marriage that had begun as a fairy tale and ended in such tragedy, stood smiling on that balcony with his heart every bit as full of hope, his eyes shining just as brightly with love. And as I watched him lean down to kiss his shiny new duchess, I couldn’t help but smile at the scene before me, once more filled with inspiration to believe in fairy tale endings.
Because what is more inspiring than a young couple in love? And what emotional act of faith is greater than pledging your life to another till death do you part? In a world full of tragedy and sorrow…what better reminder of what we were put here for - to love each other in spite of our differences; in spite of the pain our selfishness causes one another; in spite of those times when staying together seems more an act of willpower than of love. To hold fast to the promise to love each other no matter what.To always remember to stay young at heart and to never ever give up on a happily ever after…
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