Saturday, April 30, 2011

Reflections on the royal wedding



1. The first two hymns were great. Not so sure about "Jerusalem," although when I saw the words I could see why they chose it. More of a patriotic song about England than a Christian hymn really. But I do like hearing hymns sung by large crowds with a choir and majestic pipe organ music. They were sung a little slower than I'm used to, but I don't think this is always a bad thing. It gives people a chance to meditate on the words.

2. Why didn't Kate give William a ring?

3. I liked Kate's sister's (Pippa's?) bridesmaid dress more than Kate's. A very flattering design. I guess Kate's had to be a bit more conservative though. But Pippa's tan looked a tad overdone.

3. I didn't really get why they needed to have those two nuns sitting up there beside William and Kate. In fact, I didn't even realise they had nuns in the Anglican church. Must be a high Anglican thing.

4. The Bible reading from Romans was an interesting choice. But a nice change from the ubiquitous wedding reading 1 Corinthians 13.

5. Liam's only comment during the whole ceremony was during the sermon, when he said "Prince William looks bored."

6. Some of the hats the women wore looked truly hideous. Princess Beatrice looked like a moose with those antlers on. And what is with the trend of wearing them on the front of the head? It must be very distracting to see a piece of your hat every time you look in front of you.

5 comments:

Caroline said...

But does anyone have any idea what the sermon was about? I had high hopes for it when he said "For God so loved the world...", but after that I had no idea what he was talking about.

Sarah said...

I watched Kate walk up the aisle and saw some of the news coverage of the wedding the following night, but that was it.

I read that apparently William didn't want a ring because he's not a jewellery person.

I'm not a fan of 'Christian weddings' that are for tradition regardless of whether the couple actually believe it. It seems very hypocritical.

And I didn't see Princess Beatrice's moose hat. I'll have to Google it now :)

Chris said...

Not an avid royal watcher myself, but I was keen to hear the sermon. What do you say when you have a captive audience of 2 billion people worldwide? Unfortunately, I missed that bit. Maybe a brief synopsis would be helpful. I agree that a "christian" service when you don't actually believe is hypocritical.

I think one of the worst "royal" service I've seen was Princess Di's funeral. Not only did the beatification of Di seem unusual, but an entire church service when the words "God" or "Jesus" were only mentioned once seemed very hypocritical. However the sermon in the wedding of Fred and Mary was excellent.

Karen said...

I was talking to some people at church this morning about the sermon and their consensus seemed to be that it wasn't so bad. But I didn't really see that it had much of a point to it. And I would have liked to see it relate back to the Bible reading a bit more than it did.
I also agree that the "Christian wedding" for tradition seems a bit hypocritical but I guess the royals couldn't go any other option than the Anglican church given that their ancestors invented it to begin with.

Karen said...

Chris, I can't believe you actually remember what Mary and Frederick's wedding sermon was about?? I couldn't tell you anything about their wedding now (other than that the dress was nice....)