LITTLE ROCK — Dear William and Kate:
Congratulations, future Prince and Princess of Wales/King and Queen of England, on your Friday nuptials!
Now that you have enjoyed an elaborate wedding, with all the trimmings and the worldwide attention, here’s hoping you will get down to the brass tacks of having a successful marriage.
Here’s hoping that you’ll realize that a successful marriage takes work and sacrifice. Here’s hoping that you truly love each other enough to pay the costs, because love will always cost you something.
Because you are high-profile people, it will cost you extra. More than a few media outlets stand ready to make money from gossip, innuendo and rumors about you. (And man, you ought to see some of the dreck that has been peddled and sold in commemoration of your wedding! Make it stop!)
Like America’s professional athletes and rock stars, you will certainly have your groupies. And there will always be somebody ready to write a book to give up dirt on you, real or imagined. So yes, for you, marriage will involve special sacrifices. That’s a tall order that your royal parents and ancestors were not always able to fill.
In addition, you will have to make sacrifices for your fellow Brits. These are difficult times, and many of those who look to you for role modeling, if not for political leadership, are suffering from the world’s economic downtown and the considerable budget cuts in your country.
Many are wondering how to pay their light bill - to use a colloquialism from this side of the pond - and are resentful of the considerable trappings of fame and wealth you enjoy. Just look at the attack your father and stepmum/parents-in-law came under from those tuition-hike protesters, and the security measures taken to ensure that protesters (or worse) didn’t mar your special day.
Dealing with dirty dishes and piled-up laundry can put a strain on the average marriage. Dealing with protesters can certainly put a strain on yours.
Lastly, your late mother/mother-in-law - whose marriage began with a fairy-tale wedding, but then ended not-so-happily - knew the importance of reaching out to the downtrodden. Those goodwill appearances you will be expected to make will often take you away from each other. And therein lies an open door to temptation.
But you’ve got a good chance. Kate, you’re older, more educated and more savvy than your groom’s mother was at the time of her marriage to your father-in-law. Even better, you guys are closer in age than Diana and Charles were.
And as you dated nearly a decade before marrying, your wellwishers are doubtless optimisticthat your relationship is rooted and grounded in friendship. That would be a good thing. Friendship is the best foundation for any romantic relationship. Friendship will be there when the sex drive starts to falter; the skin starts to sag; and the babies and the hair curlers and the remote-hogging and the snoring and the bedcovers-stealing and the honey-dos start to overtake any moments of moon-lit passion.
The Average Joes and Janes getting married this season will also do well to keep these things in mind, but they will not have to bear your additional burdens - burdens about which many standing on the outside of your lives have no clue.
May you bear the burdens well. Best wishes.
Royally yours,
The Talkmistress Commoners and uncommoners, send e-mail:
Style, Pages 53 on 05/01/2011