You are Cordially Invited to the Royal Wedding

Hello! So, here is when all of the excitement of my weekend really and truly begins.  First, let me say, that seeing this is one of the coolest things I've ever done. This was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences for me and I loved it!

We got up at 6 the next morning and made our way to Hyde Park.  The wedding was shown on these 3 huge screens in the middle of the park.  Some of Izzy's friends got there early and got really good seats.  So, we were really close to the middle screen.  The atmosphere was awesome.  I'll give this to the Brits, they know how to pull off a huge event smoothly and effectively.  We sat in Hyde Park for 4 hours before the wedding really began and weren't bored at all.  They had fair ride type stuff, food booths, a live band and everything.  And there were tons of people.  They announced that Hyde Park was closed from any new people because there were over 120,000 people there.  Just in Hyde Park.  Let me put that into perspective. Evansville has a population of about 118,000 people. The entire population of Evansville was in Hyde Park.  It was crazy, but it was awesome.  Here are some of the pictures of just general stuff (the people and everything) before I get to the wedding stuff.

Here's the area where we sat and the huge screens they had set up.

I took lots of pictures of all of the people who were dressed up.  She was a really snazzy one.

Katelin and I decided these newscasters were probably famous in the UK.  I haven't confirmed this yet, but I'll get back to you on that.

This lady was crazy...that's all I really have to say about her.

I liked how prepared these people came.

The dog was wearing a Prince William and Kate Middleton shirt.

You can kind of see all of the people, but this picture doesn't really do it justice.

I felt like I just needed a picture.  You can see that my tan line is already forming.

After waiting a while, the wedding finally began.  People went crazy.  It was awesome to see how spirited everyone was about the wedding.  Also, fun fact, it was supposed to rain on Friday.  When Kate Middleton stepped out of her car going into Westminster, the sun came out and stayed out for most of the day.  I took a couple of videos that I posted below that you can watch.

They're both of different parts of the actual ceremony.

We stayed in Hyde Park until about 2:00.  It was a great time.  They released confetti whenever they stepped out onto the steps of Westminster and we watched them go out onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace.  It was awesome that we got to see everything.  We had a lot of fun.  

Also, if you were watching the wedding on TV, remember how those planes flew over Buckingham Palace?  Well, they flew directly over our heads in Hyde Park.

Eventually, Katelin, Grace and I decided to walk to Buckingham Palace and check out what was going on down there. We had a great stumble-upon find on our way to the palace.  We saw all of these cars coming out from behind a wall with tons of police men, so we stopped and watched for a while.  A police officer eventually explained that it was all of the dignitaries leaving Buckingham Palace.  We know for sure that we saw the dignitaries from Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, and we got to wave (and she waved back) to the Queen of Spain.

This is what we witnessed for a while.  It was pretty cool.

Once the doors in the wall closed, we started up our journey to Buckingham Palace again.  Once we got there, it was wall-to-wall people.  Seriously, we had to hold on to each other so we didn't get separated.  It was crazy. 

This is what it looked like.

After making our way out from the crowd, we ended up on the street leading into Buckingham Palace.  We heard a from a police officer that the royal family would be making their way back to the palace for the reception a 7:30, so we left the area for a while and decided to come back later.  We ended up walking back to Big Ben and then back to the area around the streets.  We waited on the street for a really long time (we're pretty sure we were on Sky News by the way), had some confusion with being in the middle of the street and then being ushered back behind the barriers and we didn't get to see them.  We saw some black cars with tinted windows drive past, and we're pretty sure that was the royal family, which I find pretty cool.

Here is the street leading up to Buckingham Palace.

Then, we went to McDonalds for dinner and headed back to Izzy's flat for the night.  We had an awesome time at the Royal Wedding.  And even more exciting things happened the next day...