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A refreshing "new wind" blew into the British royal family of history and tradition.
The royal wedding of Prince Henry of the UK and Princess Meghan from the US held on 19 May, 2018.
It became an exceptional wedding that blends British tradition with American culture.
I shall elaborate in detail the three points of this wedding ceremony, the “Love” Speech, the secret of wedding ring, and the traditional wedding dress.
First of all, point ① “Love” Speech which gained the attention of the world.
It was an impactful speech!
■ Bishop Curry
“There's power in love.
Love is not selfish and self-centred.
Love can be sacrificial,
and it can change this world.”
This is American Bishop, Michael Curry-san.
He is the first African American who serves the capacity of the presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church.
It is said that Princess Meghan, whose father is Caucasian and mother African, together with Prince Henry invited Bishop Curry.
What is in the hand of Bishop is not the Bible but a tablet!
■ Bishop Curry
“If humanity ever captures the energy of love -
it will be the second time in history that we have discovered fire.”
Bishop Curry repeated the word “LOVE” about 70 times in his speech.
The royal family showed surprised facial expression to this passionate “preaching of love”.
Furthermore, the speech went to an unexpected direction.
■ Bishop Curry
“When love is the way, then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again.”
To this sermon, even those watching the ceremony in Japan had such voices…
“The sermon of Pastor is as long as that of Principal (laugh)”
“Pastor is very funky, I wonder if he would be getting angered with afterwards”
The “Love” Speech lasted about 14 minutes.
And then, after that the famous US song “Stand By Me” was performed.
The Christian gospel choir performed the song.
In such way, the royal wedding richly incorporated new attempts which break the tradition.
Next is point ② “secret of wedding ring”.
In this scene, the couple exchanged wedding rings while looking at each other.
While this is a familiar scene even in Japanese weddings…
This was the wedding ceremony of Prince William, elder brother of Prince Henry, in 2011.
At that time, he just put the wedding ring on Princess Catherine, there was no exchange of wedding rings.
In fact, thus far the men in the royal family had a custom of “not wearing wedding ring”.
Prince Henry changes this tradition and chooses himself to wear the wedding ring.
This was also an exceptional scene.
While the innovative ideas of Prince Henry and Princess Meghan were adopted, on the other hand,
the “UK tradition” was treasured and inherited.
Point ③ “traditional wedding dress”.
Please look at the visual here.
The person who was responsible for designing the wedding dress was a British female designer of famous brand Givenchy.
It was decorated with a veil which was five meters long with the flora of all 53 countries of the Commonwealth.
The tiara was lent by Queen Elizabeth to Ms Meghan for this day.
In this way, while keeping the UK tradition the American culture was boldly adopted,
the royal wedding was “full of unique diversity”.
A “new wind” blew to the British royal family with a history of 1,000 years.
Note: In the original Japanese script, “black” was used when introducing Bishop Curry and The Kingdom Choir. Winkychan and I discussed on this, we understood it as a way to emphasise the innovation of this wedding in contrast to the royal tradition. As far as I search, the mainstream English-speaking news coverage used “black”. In this translation and sub, we changed it to “African-American” for Bishop Curry, and rephrased the sentence for The Kingdom Choir.
Source: News Zeroイチメン (http://www.ntv.co.jp/zero/ichimen/2018/05/2018-1.html)
Additional readings:-
The wedding of Prince Harry and Ms. Meghan Markle: https://www.royal.uk/royalwedding
Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (Wiki) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_of_Prince_Harry_and_Meghan_Markle
Royal wedding 2018: Bishop Michael Curry's speech in full (BBC, 19 May) http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-44186049
The Kingdom Choir: https://thekingdomchoir.co.uk/
Royal Wedding 2018: How black culture featured (BBC, 18.05.19) http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-44186819/royal-wedding-2018-how-black-culture-featured