copyright Liza Donnelly and The New Yorker magazine

My alarm went off at 4:30 this morning so I could rise and watch The Royal Wedding. I planned to live-tweet it, with a feed in our local paper The Kingston Freeman, and live-chat with other writers and editors at The New Yorker.  Why, you may ask? I am not a big fan of the Royals, nor am I a fairy tale person.  But this was a phenomena and a cultural event, and my job is to watch everything as best I can. My observations were visual and at times sarcastic, at times in awe of the spectacle.  William and Kate looked and acted as one would expect and Prince and Princess to act: restrained, pleasant, calm. The hats were wonderful, perhaps my favorite part. In all the decorum and pageantry, the hats on many of the guests displayed a fantastic measure of whimsy and fun. There was a little girl in the wedding party who betrayed her true feelings in this priceless photo–perhaps many of us felt as she appears.

I won’t do a cartoon about the event, but I share more cartoons I have done about marriage.  What does all this mean, in a world full of violence and death? Not much, but it is a distraction for a moment, and it’s fun to watch people do what they do. That’s what I do.