In the city that never sleeps, a 7am start time for the royal wedding was not going to stop more than a hundred people in fancy hats and plastic tiaras from crowding into a bar to watch an American join the royal family.
The party at the Churchill Tavern on East 28th Street in Manhattan was one of hundreds of royal wedding parties taking place across the US, where fervor for the British royals persists.
“It feels like a fairy tale that we don’t have here and now we’re feeling like we’re part of it because she’s an American,” said Geri Merchant, sipping a mimosa, on vacation from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Merchant admitted she had reached that conclusion after talking to her daughter about why exactly they wanted to go to a bar so early in the morning to watch a televised wedding.
When the standing-room-only crowd first saw Markle in her Givenchy wedding gown, squeals pierced the room. As the ceremony continued, a rhythm developed: reverential silence, followed by much less reverential commentary – “Is that person asleep?” – then coos over Princess Charlotte, Prince Harry’s face and the celebrity guests.
Desmond Barnes and his friend Octavia Alford, who wore a sequined, spaghetti-strapped Union Jack dress, said they were pleasantly surprised by the American tone injected into the wedding – particularly Bishop Michael Curry’s emotional, energetic sermon that included a reference to slavery.
The friends, who are both black, said they had been fans of the royals ever since Diana, Princess of Wales, joined the family. They were lured in by the extravagance of palace ceremonies, they said, but continued to follow the family because they seemed down to earth and were philanthropists.
Barnes said that though Markle was biracial, he “didn’t think there would be as many [black faces] as there were”.
Americans’ infatuation with the royals existed long before Markle entered the picture, but her background meant this particular wedding held a special place for some black Americans. When the engagement was announced, it fired up “black Twitter”, where people celebrated having a “black American princess” and the fact that Prince Harry’s new mother-in-law, Doria Ragland, had dreadlocks.
Such celebrations were met by pointed criticisms. Commentators emphasized that the marriage would hardly revolutionize race relations in either country. That didn’t diminish the event for people such as Tyler Young, who edits a tech newsletter covering innovators of color.
“I cannot wait to tell my children one day about this heartwarming multicultural wedding,” she said. “The Duchess of Sussex is forever a ray of light for little black and brown girls.”
How Markle uses that role now she is officially part of the royal family is not yet clear, but it is obvious large swaths of Americans will be watching her every move.
Americans have long been fascinated by the British monarchy. In 1860, when Queen Victoria’s eldest son, the future King Edward VII, visited North America for four months, tens of thousands crowded cities to see him; stories about his visit dominated magazines and newspapers. For a country on the brink of civil war, the spectacle provided some much-needed relief.
Elisa Tamarkin, author of Anglophilia: Deference, Devotion, and Antebellum America, said Americans can in some ways afford to be more excited about the monarchy than the British.
“There is a way in which the royal family can remain this vital object of attention, because in many ways it’s of no importance to a nation that can relinquish it,” Tamarkin said.
It helps that Americans’ taxes have not provided financial support to the monarchy for centuries.
If anything, this wedding has been a small boon to the US economy – specifically, to the media industry. Analysts projected $100m in revenue. Advertising slots, which at some points seemed to only feature ads for wedding rings, commanded rates comparable to major sporting events.
NBC’s Today Show built a barn-sized structure on top of a Windsor hotel. Other publications took a more relaxed tone: New York magazine published a pithily titled Royal Wedding Guide for the Apathetic But Curious.
Ahead of the ceremony, broadcasters provided Americans with a very tidy picture of the UK, soundtracked to the tune of trumpets.
American journalists, with assistance from enterprising British presenters, did segments explaining pieces of British culture such as Eton, without even hinting at all those unpleasant class dynamics. The merest suggestion of republicanism was deeply buried under jars of marmite, Union Jack bunting and royal bobbleheads.
At the Churchill, a guest named Herbert Westphalen III acknowledged that people were critical of the monarchy in the UK because of its cost, but said he felt the feeling of pride the family generated was worth any price.
“I think that [pride] is so important,” said Westphalen, an American who lives in New York City. “Sadly, in our country, we’re so far from that right now.”
Westphalen, who wore an imitation Prince of Wales pin because his actual one was being repaired, said he had been a fan of the royal family since he was a child, because his Prussian ancestors had ties to the British monarchy.
“There is an admiration for the British monarchy by Americans,” he said, “because we have nothing to compare it to.”
