Are you going to watch the Royal Wedding?

In July 1981 I looked like this:

What I wanted to look like, of course, was this:

Disappointingly the numbers of available bridesmaids in North Essex were limited and I hadn't (then) met my prince...

But I remember it so well. I was four and a half, and as far as I was concerned it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened. There was absolutely no question that I, my bridesmaid, and our parents would sit solemnly through the entire thing, live, on our new telly.

Fast forward thirty years, and I think I'd sort of imagined that L, six months younger now than I was then, would be similarly excited; and that I'd have to find out if I loved her enough to adapt my wedding dress (strapless doesn't work so well on the genuinely flat-chested) so that she and her sisters could play princesses-to-be in their turn.

But she's not going to. Not only does she not know there's a wedding happening, but she's probably never going to, because while however many thousand of their close friends are filing into Westminster Abbey and Wills and Kate are saying I do, we are going to be profiting from an extra-long weekend with no compulsion to visit family (they're coming for Easter) and heading South to catch up with various friends.  I'm enormously looking forward to it, and have no regrets whatsoever about not catching the live nuptials.  I'm pretty certain the papers the next day will show me what the dress looked like after all...

But will I regret it? Am I alone?  Are the heralded street parties actually happening (they don't seem to be here)?  Are your children wandering around with bits of net on their heads, and bouquets of daisies in their hands?  Does that weekend mean more to you than it does to us?

Are you going to watch?  And do you think I'm missing out for not doing so?

The Gallery - Before and After

As with so much else, I've been pretty rubbish at the Gallery recently.   But then Tara said that this week's was particularly difficult, and I've never been a girl to shy away from a challenge.

I did cheat a bit though.  Tara also said she was rather hoping that some of us might actually go out and take some new pictures this week, rather than using ones we've already got sitting in our computers, or on our dressing tables.  I though, have ignored her, and have gone for the latter option.  Even worse, these are photos of photos, but I don't have the negatives of either, and I always feel it's not quite acceptable to interrupt B while he's working "because I want to scan this picture so I can put it on my blog".

In my defence though, at least these are topical:

July 1981.  My sister and I playing Lady Diana (and bridesmaid).  No prizes for guessing who I got to be.  And yes, that is my mum's wedding dress.

11 June 2005, not quite twenty-four years later.  We weren't pretending this time. I've never been so scared.  Or so happy.

I wonder if I'll be brave (and loving) enough to get my dress out of its tissue paper next summer...