(England Twitter)-Tomorrow morning, a number of alarm clocks will be set for 4am by the octogenarian residents of Fox Run nursing home in Novi, Michigan. After being served with hors d'oeuvres, they'll gather around television sets for several hours of blanket coverage of the royal wedding live on all United States.
For the American media, the timing of the wedding hits a broadcasting sweet spot. The vows will be uttered as people are getting up, giving the opportunity for wall-to-wall coverage throughout the day.
Level of coverage is driving American interest in the wedding, but also reflecting it. After a day watching the full spectacle of British pomp and pageantry, the residents of Fox Run will sit down for a royal wedding dinner reception, including such fare as Royal Prime Rib, Chicken à la Kate, and Duchess Potato.
America, no commercial opportunity to cash in on the wedding has been missed. Dunkin' Donuts has produced its own tribute, a "heart-shaped donut filled with jelly and topped with vanilla icing and a chocolate drizzle". Pez candy has produced dispensers with the heads of the couple regurgitating its sweets. Naturally, Baskin-Robbins is selling a Royal Wedding Ice Cream Cake and Papa John's pizza chain has commissioned an edible portrait of the couple featuring a cheese dress and mushroom veil.
British themselves have often pandered to American Anglophiles' out-of-date impression of what the U.K is like. A perfect example of this syndrome is "Royally Mad," BBC America's two-part special about five Americans competing in a contest of obsessive knowledge concerning the Windsor family. Flown to London, they're put up in an old-fashioned hotel where they're served full English breakfast in bed by a portly butler and get to stand on the very aisle in Westminster Abbey down which the royal groom and bride will soon "process." Apparently, that's the verb form of "procession.
Interested in the royal wedding? Quite a few of you it seems judging by the number of broadcasters scrambling to broadcast the event. The British Royal household last week announced that official live coverage of the 2011 Royal Wedding will be streamed on YouTube to allow a global audience to witness the ceremonies on Friday, putting them alongside a host of national TV networks screening the unfolding of the day to a collective estimate of 2 billion people worldwide, potentially making the event one of the most-watched in The wedding, which features Prince William (2nd in line to the throne) and long-time partner Kate Middleton (who will ‘become’ Princess Catherine after the couple tie the knot) will be the biggest wedding for TV ratings since that of Prince Charles and Diana in 1981 (said to have brought in an estimated 800 million viewers).
