Up, up and away!!

I keep wanting to sing the old "TAA" jingle whenever I say "Up, up and away". What can I say? I am a child of the eighties.

WARNING: Unashamedly monarchist and girly sentiments expressed within

It’s Royal Wedding Day!

Oh, and international departure day. Yep.

Call me naïve and old fashioned, but I just love a Royal Wedding, so I’m almost as excited for Kate and William as I am for me jetting off.

I remember being 6 years old when Charles and Diana married. The year 1 class had their own mock Royal Wedding which us year 2’s attended as “guests”. We made lolly bonbons as gifts. But my favourite Royal Wedding was Sarah and Andrew in 1986. I remember SAFM playing Starship’s “Sarah” on the morning of the big day (so ‘80’s) and staying up late to watch the whole event. I wasn’t a girly girl, but for years afterwards, I wanted Sarah’s dress, and her hair. The best bit was how she arrived with flowers holding her veil and emerged after signing the register wearing a beautiful tiara. And let’s face it, Andrew was SO much better looking than Charles! Unfortunately for Sarah, the wedding day was probably the high point of her subsequent not-so-illustrious career….but it was a beautiful wedding.

As for William and Kate, the signs are good that this may be a marriage with some substance beyond the fairytale. While I believe the Royals are on another planet (Wills, it’s not good form to land a helicopter in your girlfriend’s back yard), and I remember William being a right royal brat as a tacker, it appears that he and Kate and their cohort are a little more grounded and in touch with reality. They appeal to me as a couple and I like how they’ve kept their relationship low key.

Enough justification. I’m proudly and unashamedly jumping-out-of-my-socks excited to see the Abbey, the service, the crowds, the joy of the people, the Royal Family (including Posh and Becks)…….and Kate (I hope she wears her hair down). God Save the Queen.

Only snag is, I’ll be halfway over the Pacific as the wedding commences. Sean better have programmed the set top box. Had I been at home, I would have unabashedly thrown a kitschy street-party style Britannia shindig and soaked up every gratuitous detail of the TV coverage (by the way, can someone grab me the souvenir edition of “Woman’s Weekly”?!).

.

Yep, I’m sky high between Adelaide and Sydney as I type. It’s a gorgeous morning. I should know, I’ve been up since 5am – random nightmare where the San Francisco airport train was now accessed via a steep, slippery-dip style ramp that I couldn’t climb. Check in went without a hitch (just for Sean, my bag was 28.4kg with about 8kg of stuff to be offloaded in the U.S.), and after a brief respite in the Qantas Club (where I committed my usual petty larceny by filching a handful of Nestle’s Hot Chocolate powder – I love that stuff), I was up, up and away. The cabin crew asked where I was off to and when I told them, they said “So that’s why you’re smiling” (to which I replied “Check in with me in 20 hours’time”).

Open up that Golden Gate, California here I come. And congratulations, Wills and Kate.