GREENFIELD — On a sunny spring afternoon in Windsor, a car pulled up to a castle chapel.
Inside it was seated a bride, dressed all in white, a long veil covering her dark hair. In the moments that followed, she’d slide out of the car to cheers from a throng on onlookers; she’d make her way up the chapel’s tall stone steps; and she’d swap rings, promises and a kiss with a prince.
And across the world, on a rainy and gray morning, a group of women watched from inside a Greenfield restaurant’s little dining room — oohing and aahing, twittering back and forth in hushed excitement.
More than 30 million Americans reportedly tuned in early Saturday morning to watch Britain’s Prince Harry marry American actress Meghan Markle. Among them was a crowd of about 40 Hancock County residents, who came to Carnegie’s in Greenfield for a royal wedding watch party, hosted by local event-planning company Debonair.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryThey drank tea and ate scones from a breakfast buffet, using delicate wedding china fit for any royal gathering. They wore hats and frocks as intricate and colorful as the ones flashing on the screen in front of them. They played royal wedding-inspired games of bingo and trivia that earned the winners Harry and Meghan memorabilia.
And they did it all for a good cause: a portion of the day’s proceeds were gifted to the Hancock County Community Foundation to support Imagination Library of Hancock County, which provides an age-appropriate book monthly local children from birth to the age of 5.
Debra Cochran, owner of Debonair, said her love of the British royal family and her desire to give back to the community led her to host Saturday’s event.
Cochran said it was her late grandmother who first introduced her to the royals, teaching her to emulate their prim and proper mannerisms. She’s been following the famous family since she was young, and she marks each big event with her own celebration. For example, she baked cakes when Prince William and Kate Middleton announced the births of their children, she said.
The buzz around Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding inspired her to bring folks together for the festivity. And it offered the perfect backdrop to raise money for an important literacy program, she said.
Her fellow royal fans were happy to join in the fun.
Sharon Wasson of Greenfield attended Saturday’s watch party with a friend, wearing a silver dress, a bright blue shawl and the same white, veiled sunhat she wore on her own wedding day 31 years ago.
The watch party seemed like the perfect opportunity to dig the bonnet out of her closet and dust it off to wear again, she said.
Like Cochran, Wasson is a longtime fan of the royal family, thanks to a British neighbor she had growing up who taught her all about the monarchy and life in England.
Wasson has watched every royal wedding since Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, married Mark Phillips in 1973, she said — pointing out that Harry and Meghan’s nuptials were vastly different from that affair, which was steeped in tradition.
Harry and Meghan’s wedding crisscrossed British reserve with American verve in a service that broke molds and created new ones, according to The Associated Press.
The service showed the couple’s commitment to putting a more diverse, modern face on the monarchy, highlighting Prince Harry’s royal heritage and Meghan’s biracial roots. It incorporated choirboys and a gospel choir; the archbishop of Canterbury and the African-American leader of the Episcopal church in the United States; a horse-drawn carriage and flowers hand-picked by the groom, according to the AP.
In a way, it modernized the monarchy, Wasson said.
Laurie Jackson of Greenfield agreed.
This was the third royal wedding Jackson’s watched — she saw Princess Diana marry Prince Charles in 1981 and watched Prince William marry Kate Middleton in 2011 — and Harry and Meghan’s was her favorite because of its contemporary flare.
It focused more on the couple’s love for each other rather than pomp and circumstance, she said. The audience was filled with their celebrity friends rather than politicians, and they held hands and shared loving looks throughout the hour-long service. And that was nice to see, she said.
Watching all those royal weddings turned Jackson into a bit of an expert: she collected a near-perfect score on the watch party’s trivia game that asked participants questions like how many crystals were on Diana’s wedding dress and what tune Princess Anne hummed as she got ready for her big day.
“I didn’t even know I knew that much,” Jackson said with a laugh.