Royal Adventures
When I applied to do real consulting work for a nonprofit as amazing as Soles4Souls through Fisher’s Global Projects Nonprofit Program, I expected to have an amazing experience. However, I never expected to have the truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of participating in the celebration of the Royal Wedding after my program ended. The coincidence of the wedding being scheduled for the day after the Nonprofit Program ended became one of my favorite memories from the trip and an adventure I’ll never forget.
In the two weeks leading up to the wedding while we were working with Souls4Soles, the Royal Wedding became an easy conversation topic with the top executives and technologists we were meeting with throughout England. Although my excitement for the wedding was apparent, it didn’t take long for my team and I to realized that no one we were talking to really cared about the wedding as much as we did. Over and over again, we heard comments like “Oh, it’s just Harry”, which were quickly followed by “you’d be better off staying in London” when we mentioned our plans to travel to Windsor, where the wedding would be held.
After hearing that it wasn’t worth it to go to Windsor so many times, I was starting to wonder if we actually should go as we had planned. Even the tour guide for the excursion we went on as a group warned us against trying to make the trip as we stood in Windsor, touring the castle a week ahead of time. Eventually, the four of us who had originally planned on staying after the trip for the Wedding decided to take advantage of the opportunity we had been given to witness history and go.
Planning our trip to the wedding was a learning experience in itself. Months before we left, we had to book a hotel for the night of the wedding that was reasonably priced and in a good area, decide how to get to the wedding, and figure out how to get back to the airport the next day. As the wedding got closer, all of our planning fell into place. We bought our train tickets a few days early and on the day of the wedding, we had an easy hour-long train ride to Windsor. The train wasn’t even crowded, as everyone had said it would be. Our day was off to a great start.
We arrived in Windsor and were pretty much immediately met with freeUnion Jack flags, goodie bags, and handouts, all of which we took as memorabilia for the day. We walked the streets of Windsor, waving our free flags, until we found the absolute perfect spot to wait for the bride and groom to parade by. We were only behind one group of people, right next to food trucks and the big screens showing the live coverage of everything that was happening a half a mile away in Windsor Castle. We even got interviewed by BBC World, and they totally thought we had traveled across the Atlantic just for the event.
As Meghan Markle drove by in the car with her mother, it finally cemented that we were part of history as the crowd’s excitement grew. The crowd of over 100,000 people cheered as the bride stepped out of the car and walked up the stairs, and fell into a focused silence once the opera singing began as she walked down the aisle. Every person in the crowd craned their necks in order to catch a view of the big screen as the ceremony went on, and although I didn’t have the best view, I wouldn’t have wanted to watch from anywhere else. After the wedding ended and the newlyweds toured the town, all of our waiting culminated into forty seconds as their procession passed by us, but those forty seconds were totally worth the trip.
While standing alongside thousands of people just to wish a couple well as they married in front of the world, I was beyond thankful that we decided to go to Windsor, despite nearly everyone telling us not to. Witnessing Harry and Meghan wed among all of their largest fans, I realized that taking the leap and being adventurous will almost always be worth it. I know that this is a memory I’ll always treasure, and I hope to take the lessons learned with me into my future travels.
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