Why Americans can't stop obsessing over the royal wedding

Behind the patina of pomp – the bunting, flags, trumpets, and carriages – Friday’s royal wedding highlights the ironies behind why people who tossed off monarchy 235 years ago now find themselves riveted by royalty.

Indeed, Americans and Brits will view the wedding very differently, say historians, magazine editors, and sociologists.

“The Brits may be calculating a bit more about how much it’s all costing, and who’s who – they’ll be paying sharp attention to snubs, and who’s seated where, says Sally Kilbridge, deputy editor of Brides Magazine.

“We Americans are an easier lot to please – easy to dazzle with pomps and parades, since we have so little of it,” she says. “Show us an Irish Guard in polished boots and we just about fall over backward, so imagine what the scene of hundreds of gorgeous horses and shiny carriages and smart uniforms will do to us. Add a gorgeous young woman in a real diamond tiara and we’re besotted.”

America and monarchy

“There is clearly something odd going on in America’s fascination with the royal wedding,” says Patrick Allitt, a native of Great Britain who teaches American history at Emory University in Atlanta.

The American Revolution could have led to “a complete American revulsion of all things British, but that didn’t happen,” says Professor Allitt.

“Even though Americans tossed away the idea of monarchy for themselves, there is still this lurking feeling that Britain is still the repository of high English culture that Americans can’t quite match,” he says.

Chad Martin, assistant professor of history at the University of Indianapolis, thinks English royalty fills the same American hunger for celebrity that feeds fascination with the Oscars and Grammys.

“They want to know who’s invited, who’s sitting where and what are they wearing,” says Professor Martin.

A British take on the American dream?

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