There is nothing like a royal wedding to revive faith in fairy tales.   Today’s ceremony enacted in symbolic terms everything we imagine to constitute happily ever after.   The royal groom, the bride of humble origins (well, sort of), the lengthy bridal test, and the magnetic beauty of the bride–it’s all there.  Along with a back story about what happily ever after meant for a royal wedding that took place not once upon a time, but almost three decades ago.  There we had the evil queen, the tortured princess, and the unfaithful husband giving us more of a taste of what happens in the fairy tales told long ago.  For that reason, I can’t help but feel some anxiety about the constant repetition in the news of the term “fairy-tale wedding.”  Let’s hope that Kate and William have lives that are anything but a fairy tale.

And here’s the link to Maureen Dowd’s compelling op-ed about the royal wedding.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinio…

You could sense a collective prayer among the spectators that Kate, with her Cinderella coach, Cartier tiara and satin slippers, was not a lamb being led to slaughter. Many assured the invading celebrity journalists that Kate was older and more grounded than the virginal and high-strung 20-year-old who married an older man who loved another woman.

And a sad postscript: Here’s Anne Sinclair, wife of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on the royal wedding:

On April 30, Ms. Sinclair wrote about the wedding of Prince William. “I can understand those who didn’t miss a crumb. As if, quite simply, we were like children who, before going to sleep, want a tale, a story with a princess and a dream, because real life catches up with you soon enough. …”