By: Arthur Cooper
Submitted: 2011-05-10 14:59:48 | Word Count: 664
What a magical day it must have been for Prince William and Kate Middleton as they promised to love each other forever. During the weeks leading up to the royal nuptials, the world seemed to wait with baited breath. There was and still is so much anticipation and excitement. Just as his parent’s wedding had done thirty years ago, Prince Williams’ wedding drew crowds all over the world. The streets, restaurants and bars of England were flooded to capacity all in hopes of catching a glimpse of the festivities. Many British citizens donned wedding gowns while even more waved flags and signs in support of the “wedding of the century”. Just about every television news channel has had some kind of pre-wedding coverage. Many of these channels altered their original programming to include the royal wedding theme. A host of internet sites became solely devoted to all things wedding in preparation for this dayâ€"and what a day it was.
Kate Middleton arrived at Westminster Abbey in a Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen gown and a jewel encrusted head piece. Once the princess-to-be revealed her gown to the world, there must have been a synchronized gasp heard all across world. Too bad I was still sleeping at the height of all the pomp and circumstance. Not worry, I caught all the juicy videos and images online at a respectable time of day. I knew that many people would be getting up to view this event, but I didn’t imagine that the royal wedding would break a record. Apparently, the wedding of William and Kate drew 300,000 concurrent viewers, a record for Livestream. This number accounted for viewers at 6 a.m. eastern standard time. Livestream is just one of the many sites that offer video of live content. Overall, the royal wedding has attracted almost five million online viewers.
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In addition to the amount of people that viewed the wedding live, there are millions of people that have read and viewed the wedding details from numerous websites. Even if you weren’t looking for glimpses of the wedding, you were probably bombarded by them against your will. There seems to be an unhealthy fascination with royalty. In times past, I could understand all the hoopla over a union like this, but in modern times, I just don’t get it. Why are people overly interested in what the monarchy is up to, especially since they have relatively nothing to do with the way that the country operates? Sure, all the ceremonial aspects of the wedding are wrought with European tradition and custom, but how does that explain why so many foreigners are willing to wake up that early in the morning to watch.
In the United States, fewer than 300,000 people watched the results of the presidential election that made Barack Obama president. People seem to put all of their energy into viewing events that really don’t do anything to change their livesâ€"how sad.
