Chuck and Di and the RB Convention 1981

All the buzz about the latest royal wedding got me to thinking about the last royal wedding between Charles, the Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer thirty years ago. While that was going on, I was attending a Record Bar convention in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Like most Record Bar conventions, this one was enhanced with copious quantities of alcohol and a variety of other intoxicants that most of the attendees, if asked today, would deny knowing anything about let alone using. Oh yes, one other thing, a hurricane was passing by (Wikipedia says it was Tropical Storm Bret.)

Confined to my hotel room with an outrageous hangover, I sprawled on the bed and watched every single televised second of the wedding of the century while outside, wind and rain threw themselves violently against my windows and palm trees swayed ominously. The various ceremonies took forever and tempted as I was to drag myself out of bed in order to be accounted for by the senior Record Bar management, I just didn't have the energy.

I can't say that I remember anything specific about the wedding. Most of the images of that day have been replayed a thousand times so my memories of Diana looking innocently lovely in her gown and Charles looking gallant and dashing in his uniform could have come from anywhere. Eventually the wedding was over and by then I had sufficiently recovered enough that I was able to rejoin the uninterrupted debauchery going on somewhere else in the hotel.

Sixteen years later I watched every televised second of Diana's funeral. Coincidentally, just a few months earlier I had visited Westminster Abbey as part of my first trip to London. The next summer, in Paris our bus followed the same route as Diana's car and we saw the spot where she and Dodi died.

Obviously, the royal family and I go way back but I was not upset whenI I didn't get in an invite to the upcoming nuptials. On that Friday (who get's married on Friday?) I plan to take the day off, drink more than I should and relive a little history. What will you be doing? Come to think of it, what were you doing on July 29, 1981 (if you were alive may back then.)