I'm remembering Shy Di these days with a pang, how Lady Diana Spencer, still a teenager in the early days of her engagement to Prince Charles, would lower her head and cast her eyes down when surrounded by photographers. She was the walking embodiment of vulnerability.
Not so Kate Middleton, at 29 a decade older, who comes across as the opposite of vulnerable - robust, glowing, eyes straight ahead, and seemingly sure of her next step as the most fascinating royal bride since the legendary and late mother of Prince William, her husband-to-be.
Diana was then, Catherine is now, and the stark differences between them bode well for her future. Ms. Middleton will be the first university-educated commoner to marry a future British king. They have lived together, and had eight years to understand what it will take to be successful as they (she by choice, he by destiny) give their lives over to The Firm.
It won't be long now, will it? And to answer the question that most women (and few men) are asking each other, yes, I will be getting up, precisely at 4:45 a.m. to see the pageantry live. I wouldn't miss it.
And yet in the cacophony of royal coverage - everything from ABC's Barbara Walters intoning that "the Woyal Family will be joining its destiny to the Middletons" (isn't it the other way around?) to a hilarious and uplifting YouTube parody of royal lookalikes dancing down the aisle, to every media institution assuring me that it is my go-to multiplatform destination for all things royal. I am still searching for my own genuine reaction to this event. I am obviously interested, but I'm not yet there emotionally, and I'm trying to figure out why. Could it be the media hype is so overwhelming that the only sane response is a low-key one? Or it is perhaps because those of us who took Diana seriously, who started out with her on that gorgeous July day when she married her prince (and muffed his name in the vows) and then went on to years of kookiness, betrayal and heartache before she died her tragic death, are wary of getting sucked in again?
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Or maybe it's just the passage of time. We often measure newsworthy events - even royal weddings - by how they contrast or compare with our own lives. I recently talked with an elegant woman in her seventies who shrugged at Will and Kate's wedding, but lit up remembering the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Prince Philip. The crowds, the dress, the wave from the palace balcony. Oh my.
When Diana wed Charles (and before Harry met Sally), I had already found the man I knew I was going to marry. We were sort of living together, and I remember he mocked me big time for getting up all aflutter to watch the wedding. I called my girlfriends steadily throughout the ceremony. Oh no! Her bangs were too long. Oh dear! Charles doesn't look happy enough. Oh my! The crowds, the dress, the kiss on the balcony.
I was older than Diana, but I, too, was worried about marrying into a strong family, wondering if I could hold my own. And when a year or so later I planned our wedding, no matter how much absurdly smaller in scale, it was still like orchestrating a public pageant. All brides are princesses, at least for a day, and all marriages are royal crapshoots.I am still married to my Prince, and he has already started the mocking countdown. "You're not getting up for that, you ARE getting up? Who is it that's getting married? Who cares?" I could probably engage him in a serious discussion of whether the monarchy will survive the marriage and not the other way around but I won't give him the satisfaction.
However he has promised to make me good coffee midway through, and I know there will be one moment that he will venture into the room to check if I am crying.
Kate could be my daughter. My own daughter, who lives in Paris, will be too busy working to watch a royal wedding. And I haven't found too many young women here who are willing to get up that early to catch it live.
It is instructive that a poll found that 86 per cent of British women would definitely not trade places with Kate Middleton. Why would they? To exchange a day of adoring crowds, a glass coach and that romantic kiss on a palace balcony for years of rope-line servitude? No way. Instead, they will take note of her hair, copy the dress and get on with their own liberated lives.
All royal nuptials are "the wedding of the century." This being the 21st century, there will be, in the moment, less calling my girlfriends, more e-mailing, and even a tweet or two if I can think of something original to say.
But maybe I am missing the point. There is nothing original about this royal wedding. And therein lies its charms.
The crowds, the dress, the romantic kiss from the palace balcony. Oh my.