I wore a dark blue v-neck dress to get engaged before Kate Middleton did...

...and I also already had a ring very similar to Diana's before Kate received hers, but mine is smaller, blue topaz in the middle, and yellow gold instead of white. She did get her name first, I'll give her that...she is Catherine Elizabeth while I am Katherine Ellen. My prince proposed first after dating me a shorter time and we beat her and Wills to making it all legal too, though they get their big ceremony before Andrew and I.

I find I have an affinity for her. She had to wait on a military man (albeit a unique one), and she did so patiently, with reserve and her chin up rather than with complaint, and she supports him...she appears to me to be what he needs, she seems a quietly strong woman, and she is ready to sacrifice for the love of him. Sounds rather familiar.

I know some people are sick of the hype already, some are bah humbug about the whole thing, but I for one find this royal wedding to be a great thing. Instead of sitting around hearing about this or that celebrity doing ridiculous amounts of drugs, being promiscuous or cheating on their significant others, people splitting up and general strife in the world, my television is filled with a young upstanding couple who haven't been in serious trouble and who no one speaks ill of who appear to be genuinely in love and excited to proclaim that and make their vows to each other. I think it's fantastic, and I enjoy their story.

Letterman felt the need to make cracks about being uninterested in the royal wedding, but waiting on the royal divorce. I'm sorry, but what a complete ass. Way to just be a completely bitter pessimist and have to take a dig at a young man who has been thrust into the public eye his whole life because of the family he happened to be born into, whose parents split in a manner that had to be extremely rough on him, and then lost his mother in such a tragic way...he came through it to become a gracious person, obviously affected by things and reserved, who probably spent so long dating Kate because he wanted to be sure, wanted things to go well, wanted to keep his commitment once he made it, and you're going to sneer at them and predict failure? I just think it's really snarky. Obviously I could be dead wrong in my impression of Prince William's personality from his portrayal by the press, but they love to dig up scandal so if he was awful I'm sure we'd hear more about it.

I dislike that that pessimism seems so prevalent, that people in our society seem to treat marriage as a temporary thing with a good chance of ending in a divorce, and oh well, don't worry too much you can always get out of it....ridiculous. I made vows that said they were till death, and I'm going to be repeating that when Andrew and I can have our big ceremony with our family members there, I meant it March 11th and I mean it today and I will mean it then. Vows don't expire or wear off, you don't cross your fingers behind your back and say JK!!!1! I committed to my husband for better or worse...not just when it's easy and I'm twitterpated and feeling giddy and in love, I choose to love him even when things are hard. I get the impression Will and Kate want to vow to choose to love each other for better or worse for real, not just because it's in that traditional little spiel you have to repeat...I hope I'm right. I do have those moments of discernment that are more accurate than I give credit to after all...

Heroes

I was thinking the other night about the quote that's something along the lines of "Everyone is the hero of their own story." I'm not sure who it originated with, and a quick Google search just has t-shirts and other people's musings and I'm too lazy to search further, so there ya go. :-P I was thinking about the way most of us would likely approach our memoirs...we'd justify things, portray our life as a grand adventure and/or romance, it would all become a little fictionalized. I know I've edited parts of my story into downright lies, even in my little girl diaries! Sometimes I think even our own private memories are pretty fictionalized after we've spent enough time justifying. It just seems such an impossible endeavor at times, letting someone else into our heads, explaining how we think and feel and what motivates us to act as we do. It can't be done completely, not really.

But then I think back to that quote about being the hero...so here I am, the heroine of my little life, finding it so hard to really be known...and then romance and adventure ensues and I get married. Now I start thinking about different quotes, about two becoming one, and something has changed where I'm not just the heroine of my own little story, I'm a heroine with a hero and it's OUR story now and we're a partnership that can be taken as a single character at times. Now someone is in my life and head in a way unlike anyone else...See, even now I'm having trouble expressing this idea bopping around in my brain, but you know what? I think my hero would get what I mean. :)