We didn't know how much we needed it until a wave of calm beauty and love and happiness washed over us as we joined Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in their wedding celebration. Our invitations weren't the engraved ones, but we were invited nonetheless. With the young couple making so many of the wedding plans themselves, we were able to just sit back and marvel at it all. Their joy was simply contagious.
Our times have been so dark here in the U.S. and other parts of the world. Chaos. Crisis. A cacophony of noise creating constant stress. Give me a break from Trump and his trumpeters. A congress that is barely functioning. Guns that create tragedy after tragedy. It's all gotten to be way too much.
Then Saturday arrived. How could we not want to see Diana and Prince Charles’s youngest son marry the woman of his dreams? A beautiful woman who set herself apart from any other princess-to-be by nature of who she is and the history she would be making. Never had there been a woman of professional status like Meghan Markle marrying into British royalty. Never was a previously divorced woman allowed to marry a British royal in a church wedding. And never had there been a biracial woman allowed to marry a British prince. A biracial woman whose maternal ancestors were slaves.
The Queen of England blessed Harry and Meghan's union leading to an extraordinary wedding that was both grand and down to earth at the same time. The warmth of the couple radiated amidst a glorious setting. I was one of the reported two billion people worldwide who joined the couple in celebration via whatever screens were available. A collective gratitude is being shared by all of us for having the opportunity to bask from afar in loving happiness. And a moment of peace.
When the wedding ended, I didn't want it to end. That's the way fairytales are. But we know that fairytales are pretend, and what we had just seen was real.
On the wedding day, CNN gave us morning, noon and night time coverage, but BBC America had them beat. The English network rebroadcast the royal nuptials on Sunday so we didn't have to bid Meghan and Harry such an abrupt farewell after all. Thank goodness. Simply listening to our Sunday morning news programs here at home sent me rushing back to Westminster, happy to be reunited with that blissful moment.
It seems we could use a dose of the Royal wedding every day. If getting back to work on Monday is too sharp a return to reality, take a break and change that site on your computer or your phone. You can see the newlyweds in almost a billion places.