Royal Wedding Rant.

I have the same attitude towards the royal wedding as I do Christmas.

I don't wish to be mean-spirited; in fact, I wish all the best for the couple. I would never go so far as to hope the marriage doesn't last (as one of my friends grumbled, to my dismay) - no, in fact, I want Wills and Kate to be eternally happy together, to have several beautiful children (of whom none hopefully will marry in my lifetime; one wedding's enough for me, thank you) in whatever the equivalent of a white-picket fence house with water-sprinklers is for the royal family.

The essential sentiment of the thing is something I have no problem with. After all, a wedding is nothing but occasion to be happy about. In this age of budget cuts, political turmoil, war, and natural disasters, the least one can do is to know at least one (very, very prestigious) couple are happily tying the knot, looking forward to spending the rest of their lives together.

Actually, I was rather apathetic towards the wedding in the last weeks preceding it. 'Good for them', I thought. It has only been these last few days that the fatigue has really started to settle in.

Everywhere I walked in London, newspapers screamed 'KATE WON'T OBEY WILLS'; 'WHO DESIGNED THE WEDDING DRESS?'; 'BEER WON'T BE SERVED AT THE WEDDING'; and other equally speculative titles. Union Jack flags seemed to follow me at my every single turn. I couldn't walk past a memorabilia shop (or almost any shop, for that matter) without being greeted by rows and rows of tacky royal wedding merchandise. Teapots, teacups, teabags, cutlery, handkerchiefs...one shop even sold royal wedding cereal (guaranteed to help you lose weight before your own big day). Before you could wonder, 'what next'?, there it was.

That's why I still haven't seen what the royal wedding dress looks like. I'm choosing to do a quiet little boycott, and instead try and get some work done. The most I've seen of the wedding as of now were a few glimpses I managed to catch in my half-asleep daze, when my uncle turned on the TV to tune into the live coverage. I'm sure in the next few days, even weeks, there'll be more than enough talk about it in London. Hopefully, in time, the buzz will peter out, and I'll be able to walk around London free from being bombarded with matrimonial news. I can just imagine the headline months from now: 'WILLS AND KATE ADOPT DOG; ADORABLE'. Shudder.

But this misses the point of my post. What my problem is with, rather than the couple, or even wedding itself, is the reception by the people. I find it utterly bizarre that people could be so emotionally invested in something so essentially removed from them. You have no more input or relevance to the wedding than the next person, and celebrating it won't make you any more important to the royal family. People who have camped out at Westminster Abbey since Tuesday, who have flown in and are staying at hotels with jacked-up prices just for this period, just to watch...all I can say is, I simply don't understand.

I hate that people have exploited what I would consider to be such an emotional event. Like Christmas, the essential sentiment of the occasion has been lost, buried underneath all the mounds and mounds of cheap materialism, knock-off memorabilia, idle gossip, and inconsequential speculation. To me, it speaks of nothing but the fickle, cunning, almost depressingly sly nature of people. Can't we just let the royal wedding be enough in itself? I wonder how Wills and Kate themselves feel about all the attention.

Oh, I don't know. Perhaps I am just too jaded. I certainly feel very much like a Scrooge, out to ruin the spirit of the matter. Prapim, stop being such a party-pooper! Prapim, why so cynical? After all, it's just a time for fun, isn't it? An excuse to go out and experience something wonderful, historic, magical.

Besides, it's not like I haven't celebrated or looked forward to more trivial matters with even more excitement myself. In fact, tomorrow morning, I'll be queueing for about three hours just for a chance to buy some tickets for the last performance of Frankenstein at the National Theatre.

The difference is, I might get to see Benedict Cumberbatch.

Hey. Maybe I do understand after all.