The whole tog family will be dodging the big wedding dress revelation tonight by going to see a comedy show instead. Thank you, generous John Robertson! Dragon Punch is his Sydney Comedy Festival show about three generations of geeks having a showdown at a family BBQ. If you’re looking for something amusing to do in Sydney in the vicinity of the Seymour Centre this evening, you could come along too, and maybe we can all buy him a drink after the show.
If getting a wee bit sentimental or spectacle-appreciative about the wedding is your thing, and you’re planning on turning the shindig in London into a shebang of your own with likeminded friends (I’ve been mildly surprised by how many people I know are making a party night of it all), then I do hope you all enjoy every last bit of it. It’s not my thing. I’ll settle for the inevitable looped highlights segments all over the moving wallpaper box tomorrow.
If you’re avoiding all the hoo-haa as well, what strategies are you using? It’s back to the radio dramatisation of I, Claudius for me for another hour or so before I head out the door.
Categories: arts & entertainment, media
Wonder Woman movie marketing machine tied up in knots 
2016 Hoydens: Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher 
Media Circus: No More Knights And Dames Edition 
‘It’s my right to get hellish’…Orly? 
Hoyden About Town 
I’m watching season 5 of Angel with my daughter. I asked the kids if they cared about watching the wedding and none of them had any idea what I was talking about. Yes, we all live under a rock. I suppose I’d better make sure they’re more or less up to speed before they go back to school on Monday though.
I’m planning on watching it while eating fish and chips. And avoiding the scolding, contemptuous, flouncy shit elsewhere online about how people who spend two hours watching the royal wedding clearly hate their families and have no interest in solving world hunger. I can’t help but think that the sheer prevalence and flavour of this loathing comes from a sexist place, as you rarely see the same sort of thing aimed at the (mostly) men who slaver feverishly for many hours over their preferred spectacular displays of genetically-advantaged overpaid folks.
There is a huge amount to critique about the monarchy itself, but aiming vitriol and heaping shame on people who tune in to watch a bit of pretty frockage and hattage on a Friday night seems mis-aimed and out-of-proportion to me.
Hmm… well, aside from my usual strategies (telly isn’t connected to the aerial, radio isn’t plugged in, can’t afford the newspapers, and articles about the RW from my ABC news feed are able to be marked read in the ticker without opening them) not much, to be honest… well, aside from having my in-laws show up tomorrow between 1 and 2pm. I figure the effort involved in getting the house back to “moderately presentable” for their arrival should be quite sufficient as a distraction.
My strategy got picked up by the SMH!
Those are all suggestions that came up from my friends when I tweeted about this yesterday. It’s my brush with social networking fame! (I have a relative at SMH, so I assume it was all passed on in the newsroom.)
Note to anyone who is picking from this: Rachel Getting Married was rejected by my husband as “too dark”, so it’s not in keeping with the tone of the rest of it.
Oh and I should add that in the end we are going with The King’s Speech (I haven’t been to the cinema since I had a baby, so I haven’t seen this yet) and Muriel’s Wedding.
Well, I can hardly get on a high serious bizness horse about going out for an escapist comedy show instead of staying in to enjoy an escapist pageantry spectacular.
One of the things I will be interested in in all the dissection over the next week or so is going to be photos of the hats. Milliners get so few chances to really exhibit their skills these days, and some of their constructions are glorious.
Check out my sister’s Edward VIII getup for her party: http://yfrog.com/gz28mlqj
I’ve also been mildly interested in what new aristocratic titles (and incomes) William would be bestowed upon his wedding day. They’ve stuck to the usual tradition of an English Dukedom, a Scottish Earldom and and an Irish barony (he’s already a Welsh princeling, so that’s all corners of the United Kingdom covered).
If getting a wee bit sentimental or spectacle-appreciative about the wedding is your thing
I lean more to the “I wish them well, but don’t need to watch it all” position. With a dash of “it feels a bit intrusive to watch it” (irrationally, since it makes no difference to them, but still).
“he’s already a Welsh princeling”
He’s not, is he? I thought it was his dad’s title until dad becomes king?
@Rebekka, he’s been Prince William of Wales since his birth (that’s why I said princeling, which means a prince who is not the direct offspring of a monarch i.e. princelings are sons of royal princes and dukes)
@Mary – they didn’t suggest The Wedding Banquet? My favourite feelgood wedding movie of all.
I was going to watch Kill Bill 1 & 2 – it has a famous Bride in it after all – but was sucked into watching it by the daughter, who rolled her eyes, shushed me and told me what a terrible heartless cynic I am throughout. But we both agreed that the couple dozen coal-black prancing cavalry horses were totes awse.
Having caught up with a few photos of The Dress now, I’m glad for the brides of the next few years that she went for lovely long sleeves. It gives me goosebumps to see brides in sleeveless wedding gowns in cooler weather, and I’m hoping they’ll move away from that now.
Duke of Cambridge. We ended up watching the almost the whole thing. The marriage bit was quite quick, it was all thegod stuff afterwards that took the time.
Dress was nice. Veil was lovely. Lots of copies to hit the high street in a few hours I suspect.
Haven’t seen a piccy of our Julia, must google.
Spent a lot of time thinking about how much the status of Kate’s siblings as partners has just skyrocketed. Imagine marrying someone who has the future Queen of England for a sister. (No thanks, but I’m guessing that it would appeal to some).
myNigel wondered if the Bride’s father still had to pay for the reception.
Ms Gillard will not appease the fashionistas by having mixed and matched a bunch of different designers instead of choosing one to set her up with a distinct “outfit”. I thought she looked fine, in the made-an-effort-but-not-trying-so-hard-as-to-get-it-badly-wrong sense (which is probably exactly the right territory to aim for), although the fascinator was surprisingly large.
Apparently the Middletons kicked in 100Ksterling for the reception.
Yay, hats!
Also, cartwheeling verger!
@tigtog, thanks – new fun fact for me, I had no idea
It’s one of those words which gets bandied about loosely, so I’m not surprised!
There’s quite a difference in the hierarchy between being A prince of Foo, and THE prince of Foo.
The cynic is just wondering how long it’ll be before Disney makes an animated movie out of it, complete with huge hamster eyes on Kate.
Daughter and I also noticed that with her fashionably-implausibly-skinny frame, Kate looks like a figure generated by CGI on TV. I could just see her in Sims or WoW. This must have added to her gen-Y/Millenial appeal.
I loved Kate’s dress (sleeves), but the sermon how marriage was only between men and women and was pretty much the only way you could be a well rounded person and marriage was for having kids had me saying loud things at the TV.
We just talked during the sermon. It seemed appropriate to just ignore it.
Re Skinny Kate, I had an implausibly skinny waist the day we got married. My cousin who made my dress had to take it in twice, by quite a chunk each time. No dieting. Just stress.