Anglophiles young and old are waking up at the crack of dawn in the United States this Friday to watch the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey.
Take residents of an assisted living facility in the Chicago suburbs, for example. They’ll toast the royal couple with champagne, an accoutrement to the facility-provided wedding cake and finger sandwiches. The 100 residents will be among the two billion worldwide expected to watch the royal event on television.
The future king and queen of England’s exchange of vows will take place at 5:00 a.m. Chicago time, with live coverage from U.S. news outlets getting started long before that. For baby boomers and Gen-Xers, the only royal wedding they can compare notes against was that of William’s parents, Prince Charles and Princess Diana of Wales in 1981. But some assisted living residents also could be comparing the younger royals to Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who married in 1947.
