Did you get up early in the morning on Friday (or stay up late) to watch the “event of the century” aka Prince William’s wedding to (then) commoner Kate?
I confess, I did.
When I was quite a wee girl, I was fascinated by the hoopla surrounding the then event of the (20th) century … the wedding of Prince Charles to Diana Spencer.
I didn’t live in India at the time; because of an overseas posting my father had, we lived in Sri Lanka.
And even though it was thousands of miles away from the United Kingdom, people on that side of the world were equally fascinated by the unfolding of many little girls’ fantasies …
… to marry a prince and live happily ever after.
Thank you, Disney.
I remember making a scrapbook of the Royal Wedding, and watching, mouth agape, at the pomp, ceremony and pageantry.
And, of course, The Royal Kiss.
Friday’s event had quite as much pomp and circumstance.
But thanks to social media, pretty much anyone with an Internet connection could participate.
As I wrote in my BNET post this past week:
- @ClarenceHouse (named for the official residence of the Prince of Wales) has a steady stream of information it’s releasing, from who’s doing the flowers to Twitpics of the gathering hordes. It’s created a hashtag to keep track of wedding wishes coming the young couple’s way on Twitter (#rw2011, in case you’d like to be one of them), and will be providing live updates on the day of the wedding.
- You can “RSVP” to the wedding via its Facebook page (and some of the responses in themselves are worth “liking” the page).
- It’s keeping its Flickr stream updated.
- Its YouTube channel will live-stream the wedding, and is letting well-wishers leave their own video messages for the couple.
- And just in case you missed any of the above, the official Royal Wedding website puts it all together for you.
I didn’t watch the wedding on YouTube, but on NBC (though I later saw that PBS was broadcasting the BBC’s feed, and could have kicked myself for not finding that out earlier, because it was so much better).
But I did have a little bit of a chat with various Twitter and Facebook friends leading up to the wedding, and after.
Can someone please tell me what in God’s good name Princess Beatrice decided to put on her head?
Not to mention following a couple of hilarious Twitter feeds, particularly that of @Queen_UK and @PrincessKateFTW.
Social media certainly gave it a unique dimension.
And what I could sense – even though I was far, far away from the event’s physical locale – was the excitement, pride, wonder and joy that most people were feeling, and expressing.
It didn’t matter who you were, where you were, what you did or didn’t do … it was as close to a fairytale as you could get, and we loved jumping from one page to another.
Of course, the cranky pants brigade was out as well, but you’ll have them anywhere.
There are some terrible things happening in the world right now.
And we don’t pay nearly enough attention to them … perhaps because our human shock absorbers can only take so much before they break us down completely … or perhaps because we are so wrapped up in our own little lives and worlds, that nothing else seems as important.
I believe that collectively, we do need to pay more attention to the tragedies and devastation that occurs on a nearly daily basis, and do what we can, even if it’s in a really simple way, to make life better for someone else.
But I also believe that collectively, we should find joy where we can, and give joy when we can.
The Royal Wedding did that for me. And for so many others as well.
Thank you, Will & Kate, and God Bless.
Image: Defence Images via Flickr, CC 2.0
@bdorman264 Ha, no, I will never rue that day. I’m greatly enjoying getting to know you.
@Shonali @ginidietrich But w/ a smile on my face………….:)
@Shonali Maybe I misspoke, I meant you might rue the day you let this motley crew in…………
@bdorman264 You? Definitely! @ginidietrich
@bdorman264 I never said you’d rue the day!
@Shonali @HowieSPM @KenMueller @ginidietrich @patrickreyes@bdorman24 Oh contraire Madam Cricket, it was you who welcomed me into your world…………………what? Whadda mean you will rue the day………………….:)
Oh, and like we would say something innapropriate…………I wonder if we are part of that feisty group @ginidietrich was talking about?
@HowieSPM Twitter is indeed a great way of following events in real-time. That’s actually when I “got” Twitter – when the Mumbai attacks happened a couple of years ago. I spent pretty much all those days following the events & live-tweeting as it unfolded – it was exhausting, but also really eye-opening.
@KenMueller I’m really glad you found Livefyre too :p. And I think props have to go to @ginidietrich@bdorman24 and @patrickreyes , to name just a few, are connections of hers who have generously welcomed me into their (your) lives. Thank you.
@HowieSPM @DannyBrown @TheJackB @bdorman264 @ginidietrich @livefyre @jennalanger @jkretch Man, I think over the past week there have been a lot of us blogging about the real time nature of social media. Just glad I didn’t blog about the Royals!
And I love Livefyre. So glad i found it through a bunch of you. Been great for my blog.
You are so lucky you didn’t have all the Spin Sucks Rapscallions ahem @DannyBrown @TheJackB @bdorman264 @KenMueller coming here who were ruining @ginidietrich ‘s big day from her Friday post.
I have found Twitter way more of a valuable tool for real time following of an event with many people than Facebook. But while I blogged today about the false value of real time web in general…this is one that has value even if we use it infrequently.
I love how @livefyre lets me bring my own party somewhere. cc @jennalanger @jkretch can’t do that with any other conversation engine now can we?