Weddings

It's all over. Mum's long cherished ambition of her eldest daughter becoming Princess of England is now officially caput. Kate has married William, and ten years of my mum ending every conversation about my love life with "if you'd just taken that place at St Andrews Uni instead of going to Bristol, Holly" have all come to nothing.

I'm not a particularly big fan of weddings - buying a contract phone brings me out in commitment hives - and yet something made me watch the ceremony live this evening. And that something is Yuki. Who is more of a British royalist than anyone British I've ever met. Despite being 100% Japanese.

"We need to be home by 7" she told me while we were lying on the beach this afternoon. "I have to see the wedding. I need to compare my wedding dress with Kate's wedding dress."
"Your wedding dress?"
"Yes."
I stared at her. "Yuki, you're not even dating anyone."
Yuki stared back at me. "So?"she asked in confusion. "What's that got to do with my wedding dress? It's my dress, isn't it?"

She then spent the entire wedding hour sighing. "I want a dress with lace, now," she told me emphatically (or, as she later emailed me, "race"). "Lace all over. I have to change everything. It's so confusing. I thought I wanted one like Diana." And then she sighed again. "It's so beautiful. Just like a Disney wedding."
"This is a Britney Spears track, you know," I told her as the choir started singing.
"Really?" Yuki leant forwards to listen more carefully. "Wow. Which one?"
"I think it's Hit Me Baby One More Time."
Yuki leant forwards a little bit more. "I can't make it out," she said.
"That's because it's been adapted for Westminster Church," I explained, biting my bottom lip.
"Ah." Yuki nodded knowledgably. "It's beautiful. But I don't want Britney Spears."
"Lady Gaga?" I suggested. "I think they do Westminster versions of that too," and Yuki finally worked out I was winding her up and smacked me.

It was lovely, watching the event through the eyes of someone else. It's true that a little bit of the event seeped into me too, although millions of screaming fans don't exactly epitomise romance to me: it was a little more like a Beatles concert than a sacred and intimate event between two people in the eyes of God. Nevertheless, it was very pretty, it was very British, and they seemed genuinely very happy, so I was pleasantly touched and surprised at myself for being so, although reassured by the cynicism I felt over the blubbing strangers who had camped out for seven days to watch a carriage drive past (I wouldn't camp for seven days to be a part of my own wedding).

Through the eyes of the enraptured Yuki, though, I saw an entirely different event. I saw the climax of a dream: the way life should be. Life as a beautiful Disney movie, where we all meet a Prince, wear lace and live in a castle. And nothing bad ever happens again.

And the fact is: it's what we all need now and then. Not the truth - nobody ever wants the truth - but a version of it that makes reality go away for a little while. And so what if it's covered in lace and we've never met it before? It just makes the dream that much easier to believe in.

Me though? I might always be the little kid at the front of the balcony, with the scowl on her face and her hands over her ears (the kid who made me laugh just at the point where Yuki burst into tears). But it doesn't mean I don't believe in love, or in happy endings. It just means it can be a little overwhelming sometimes.

And maybe that's exactly what this wedding was supposed to remind us. That in a world where horrible things happen all of the time, love is the only thing we all stop for. That we can plough through death and hunger and war and cruelty and broken hearts and recessions and keep moving, but love is still the only thing that will make us all stand still. All over the world. English or Japanese; French or Chinese or Mexican or Russian or Australian; anywhere. Overwhelming, elaborate, glorified, gold coated love.

Or - perhaps more specifically - the little bit in the middle we all know is simple.