Click on the linked picture above to go to a newsy.com video about the surprises within the guest list of Prince William's royal wedding to longtime sweetheart, Kate Middleton. You can also find the written transcript together with the video at [ http://www.newsy.com/videos/royal-wedding-guest-list-surprises/ ].
Is it the wedding of the new millennium!!? Prince William, the future King of England, is to marry an English commoner, his university girlfriend, Kate Middleton.
Let's wish his marriage does not end up the same way as the first marriage of his father, Prince Charles, to the legendary Princess Diana; or even that of his uncle Prince Andrew or his aunt Princess Anne - all first marriages ending in divorce.
Everyone would love to be on the wedding guest list: almost 2,000 people personally invited to the ceremony at Westminster Abbey, London - just opposite Parliament at Westminster - the church of royalty where kings are crowned and also buried (as are other famous British historical figures).
The press pointed out one colorful guest invited by Prince Charles: a patron of "The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts", an oil tycoon from Kazakhstan, who was arrested, along with his wife, at the Moscow airport in 1993 with "a million dollars in cash stuffed into their underwear".
The news media were further titillated to find that Kate was inviting two "ex-boyfriends" and that William's "ex-girlfriends" on the guest list totaled at least four.
When we look back on his father's fateful marriage to Lady Diana, the issue of ex-girlfriends may be significant. Charles began courting Diana in 1980 and they were soon married in 1981. Charles met his second and present wife, Camilla, almost a decade before that, in the early 70s. However, the Prince joined the Armed Forces and had to leave Britain to serve on the British naval destroyer HMS Norfolk. The Telegraph writes: "By the time he returned, eight months later, she was engaged to her on-off boyfriend and long-standing admirer, Parker Bowles..."
The Telegraph continues:
"Curiously, and with an ominousness that was to become clear only years later, Andrew and Camilla Parker Bowles were present at most of Charles and Diana's courtship venues - Sandringham, Balmoral, Windsor, at the homes of friends...
"By the time Charles proposed to her, she said: "I'd realised there was somebody else around. I'd been staying at Bolehyde with the Parker Bowleses an awful lot and I couldn't understand why she [Camilla] kept saying to me: `Don't push him into doing this, don't do that.' She knew so much about what he was doing privately... eventually, I worked it all out."The BBC adds:
"In 1981 Charles married Diana Spencer, a union said to have been encouraged by Mrs Parker Bowles - he is said to have proposed in the Parker Bowles' vegetable garden."According to the Telegraph, even days before the royal wedding:
"Diana related how she discovered a gold chain bracelet with a blue enamel disc that Charles had had made for Camilla as a parting token. It was engraved with an entwined "G" and "F" - for Gladys and Fred, their nicknames. Though Diana confronted him about his proposed gift, Charles went ahead and presented it to Camilla two days before his marriage."Diana and Charles officially separated in 1992, and in 1995 Diana famously said on national television: "There were three of us in this marriage so it was a bit crowded." (There is a common English proverb: "Two's company, three's a crowd".) They were divorced in 1996, and the very next year Diana was killed in Paris in the speeding Mercedes-Benz of a millionaire playboy.
Let's hope William's fate will not be as dramatic.
So I have made a playful quiz for you. In the pictures of female wedding guests below, which do you think are Kate's friends and which are William's ex-girlfriends. Similarly, in the pictures pictures of male wedding guests below, which do you think are William's friends and which are Kate's ex-boyfriends? (ANSWERS at the bottom of this post.)
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| WHICH are three of Kate's close friends, and which are four of William's ex-girlfriends? Clockwise beginning from the bottom left: 1) Rose Farquhar, 2) Jecca Craig, 3) Arabella Musgrave, 4) Holly Branson, 5) Alicia Fox-Pitt, 6) Emma Sayle, 7) Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe (the long name mentioned in the video). ANSWERS at the bottom of this post. [Research info and various photo credits: The Daily Mail here, and here.] |
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| WHICH are three of William's friends, and which are two of Kate's ex-boyfriends? Clockwise beginning from the bottom left: 1) Drummond Money-Coutts, 2) Willem Marx, 3) Rupert Finch, 4) Guy Pelly, 5) Thomas van Straubenzee. ANSWERS at the bottom of this post. [Research info and various photo credits: The Daily Mail here, and here.] |
Some notes on the language:
- nuptials - This noun refers to the wedding. It is quite a formal word, and not usually used in casual conversation except perhaps in a joking or mocking tone. This formal noun is often used in its adjectival form: "nuptial". (Super-rich celebrities often make sure that they sign pre-nuptial agreements with their prospective spouses.) Thus there are quite a few nouns related to this concept, which include: nuptials, wedding, marriage and matrimony. The most common related verb is "marry" (note that "marriage" is the noun, so do not use "marry" as a noun). Nouns can sometimes be used as adjectives without changing their form - note also here that there are some forms specially made into adjectives, such as: nuptial, matrimonial and marital (each adjective here made with the -al suffix).
- invite - This is a verb. However, you will see that it is used in a casual way in this video - "an invite" - as a noun. The grammatical noun is "invitation" - and like the nouns mentioned above, can be made into an adjective by adding the -al suffix, hence "invitational".
- "ex" - "Ex" can be a prefix to indicate the concept of "previous"; hence we can have: ex-girlfriend, ex-boyfriend, ex-wife, ex-husband, ex-classmate, ex-boss, ex-president etc.
Practice your English by watching and listening to the video above. For more detailed study, you can read the written transcript at the link given above
I'll be happy to receive questions and comments from English learners, and I'll try to answer your queries here about the language in this video. I look forward to your comments!
[ANSWERS to the quiz above: K = Kate, W = William. A) GIRLFRIENDS? 1) W, 2) W, 3) W, 4) K, 5) K, 6) K, 7) W. B) BOYFRIENDS? 1) W, 2) K, 3) K, 4) W, 5) W.]
