I resolved some time ago to avoid mentioning The Royal You Know What on this blog.
However, now it’s over – but is on some kind of endless media loop tape – I feel impelled to say that the main problem with weddings in the tarty 21st Century isn’t the empty promises and meaningless gestures. Everyone loves those. No, it’s the fact that the groom can’t be a bride too.
On the Big Day he has to channel his inner princess through his Wife-To-Be. Which is very traditional of course, but a bit unfair and not really what today’s narcissistic, pampered young men have been led to expect by advertising and Men’s Health magazine. Or, for that matter, feminism and ‘equal opps’.
On the one day in his life the average man gets to be treated like a celeb or royalty and travel by limo and be endlessly photographed and videotaped he has to wear a very boring standard issue hired Victorian frock coat that hides his gym body – or if he’s lucky enough to be a member of the Royal Family a pillar box red ‘dress uniform’ apparently made out of felt, horsehair, chicken wire and Gilbert & Sullivan props. His wife on the other hand gets to choose something modern, designer, sensuous and very expensive. That everyone will look at and talk about.
This makes for a rather ‘over-determined’ bride, poor dear. Who has to try to live out not only her own inner princess fantasies but those of her fiancée as well. You can imagine the arguments that go on in today’s bridal shops: ‘Look, Nigel, I TOLD you it would be better if you just went for another work-out or haircut and left me and my girlfriends to choose the bloody frock!’
Maybe it’s because the groom is still forced to channel his inner princess through the bride that Kate and her Tudor eyebrows looked a little like a post-op TS version of Wills.
For the sake of some kind of balance, I should also add that one of the reasons why gay (male) weddings can seem so redundant to me is because there is no bride at all – just two grooms. All the fuss and bother – and twice the suit hire – of a straight wedding but without the frocking point.
You have no idea how many requests the Nudie Girls get for guys (presumably straight) to outshine their brides in Nudie Suits.
Peacocks, one and all.
“do you mean for the occasion of their own wedding, Uroskin? Or the occasion of the royal wedding?”
For the royal wedding. S/he even changed outfits in tune with Kate’s during the TV coverage as the night wore on (it was late evening viewing here in NZ). OTOH I heard from some straight male friends the wedding was a disaster because the bridesmaid looked hotter than the bride. I told them the same was the case too with the bridegroom and the best man.
While we’re on the subject of royalty, who do you guys think is Harrys father?
Re gay weddings: No need for a inner princess when your a queen.
“Evidently she has ‘skills’ acquired at an establishment in Shanghai”
I doubt this disclosure by Queen Mum to WSC from “The King’s Speech” actually took place, but it’s fun to imagine it did.
I wonder if Mrs. Simpson ever got our favourite crypto-fascist to participate in a bisexual threesome with car salesman Guy Trundle?
The prince may have been unable to choose his trousseau, but he still managed to look quite gay, in his own way.
The hub and I will be hopping the ditch to attend our first ever gay wedding (apart from our own, that is.)
Though both grooms will wear suits, let me assure you, their inner princesses will be let off the leash.
When last visiting London, we arranged to have a bite with the chaps. Frightfully difficult, since we had to schedule it around their fittings (both had agreed not to see the other’s wedding outfit until the big day) and the brief to the florist. They will hold the ceremony in a deconsecrated church that specialises in gay weddings and other gaieties. They even made a wedding list (under protest, they maintain). They haven’t quite reached the groomzilla stage, but we’ll keep a close eye on them.
Our own Bavarian Civil Partnership, or Lebenspartnerschaft? Ah, memories!
It took place in a notar’s office, with only our translators as witnesses. My trousseau consisted of a pair of jeans, a business shirt, and some Blundestones, if I recall. My husband dressed in a similar fashion, except he prefers Camper footwear. (Is there a gay joke in that?).
Later, we cracked a bottle of rather nice bubbly over our Chinese take away, but shunned any other celebration.
So, we settled in for a night of TV. Irony of ironies, the first programme to come up was a German reality show called Bauern sucht Frau, or “Farmer Seeks a Wife”. No inner princesses waiting to be unleashed on that show, lemme tellya.
Ann–re military uniforms. Not into them in the slightest. Does this make me officially perverse?!
Re weddings (royal, commoner, vulgar, every which way): they uncontrollably bring out otherwise (relatively) rare misanthropic tendencies in me. Can’t help it! Though I would make an exception for ones involving more than two people…
Have to say I’m really confused by this. I thought the one thing we can all agree on, men and women, gay, straight, bi, fluid, blah blah blah, is that military uniforms are HOT!
OK, maybe not these particular military uniforms. But most of them. Maybe if the pants were tight…
Surely any two people getting married could agree that one wears a hot military uniform and the other wears another hot military uniform. They don’t have to be of any actual existing military branch. Just the idea.
Whether they want to call themselves “bride,” “groom” or, technically correct, “bridegroom,” is entirely up to them.
BTW the white wedding dress is a very recent invention (Queen Victoria, I think). Why anyone would want to wear such a thing is beyond me. Before that, women just wore their best dress, if they had more than one. And hardly anyone would have white–so impractical.
AJ: True. But if you look at their smiles, covering their upper faces with your hand, I think you’ll see something more feral.
I find it fascinating how women’s power is such a completely nebulous and contextual thing. Depending on whom you ask, this Kate person is either a milquetoast, almost-Stepford wife, or a square-jawed, ballbusting dominatrix. Which is strange, since all the, albeit limited, footage I’ve seen of her suggests that she has little in the way of distinguishing characteristics.
It is interested that it’s only the hair that really suggest who’s what gender in that photo. They both look like sexless, well-behaved sugar cookies to me.
I find it VERY easy to imagine Kath as a total dom. She radiates a type of self-confidence that says “not to be trifled with”
All the straight x-dressers I know hired a wedding gown for the occasion. Was it my febrile imagination but didn’t look Harry straight out of Blackadder in his Plantagenet-style black uniform?
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