Royal Wedding! ( A week or so late!)

So, I admit, I went to the royal wedding.  As I’m still a tourist at heart, I see no harm in this.  I do however, believe that the news could have covered other stuff, ya know like the 300+ deaths in the American South rather than covering the royal wedding but to each their own. 

Anyways, thanks to Will and Kate, we got a total of 12 work days off in April as opposed to our regularly scheduled 11. :)  It’s tough being a teacher in London man.  We had to work Tuesday through Thursday the week of the wedding and on Thursday, we were encouraged to wear red, white and blue for the country’s colors.  It was very weird wearing those colors for another country I must say.

Danielle, Kat, Aaron and I left BC at about 9 am to get on the bus to begin our long journey to watch the wedding.  Turns out that we weren’t the only ones going (duh).  Our first attempt was at Pall Mall street. Unfortunately, it was so packed that they had the entire section of the road that was facing the procession blocked off.  It was here though that we got cool wedding tea from Twining's.

Here is a picture of a bit of the crowds we saw wandering the street after we all realized that we couldn’t go stand on Pall Mall street.

When we couldn’t see anything here, we followed the crowds to Green park.  When we couldn’t get in there, we kept walking to Hyde Park.  On the way, we stopped at a Hard Rock to watch a bit of the wedding as it was going on. 

Clearly these were the best seats in the house, after being in Westminster of course.  See the TV screen just off to the left from the center? That’s them getting married.

 

Danielle and I outside of Hard Rock with my free celebratory flag.

On our way to figuring out where we’d go, we saw the guards prancing down the street on their horses, it was pretty cool but mildly pointless.

We kept wandering with the crowd till we go to Hyde Park where we weren’t allowed to walk on the grass at certain points.  They actually had the path way you could take LINED with guards to make sure you did not step on the grass. 

The crowds there were huge! As was the screen, it was kind of cool.  From there, we watched the very last bits of the wedding, including when he tried to get the ring on and it got stuck.

 

When Katherine (You have to call her that after she gets married apparently) and Will left Westminster, we started to head out of Hyde Park to go to a pub somewhere to watch the rest of the events on a TV and drink a beer.  The reason we could do this was because the wedding ended at 12 and the first kiss wasn’t until 1:30.

On our way out of Hyde Park, we saw these guys again!

When we got to the pub, we got prime seats right in front of the TV.

The massive crowds outside of Buckingham Palace.

The Queen

The second “first” kiss.  They didn’t kiss each other during the ceremony, this was the first time, well the second as of this picture, that they were allowed to kiss each other. How sad.

The Queen and bride and groom.  The littlest flower girl who you can barely see on the left of the queen had a little pink wiggly worm in her hands during the wedding photos. :)

 

Then we went home, all weddinged out.