Having a Merrie Time in England : For U.S. Tourists, Prince’s Wedding Is a Royal Treat

New Yorkers Nancy and Jerry Reisman were exuberant. They’d been at Windsor Castle Monday and while queuing up for their tour they saw NBC--no, maybe it was CBS--setting up. The flag was flying above the castle, which means the queen was in residence. When they came out from their tour, there must have been a thousand people backed against the wall looking up at the balcony. Heck, they’d missed the queen.

But wait, preceded by security police, it’s Princess Diana. She’s walking right through this parting of the crowd, waving, smiling. Really friendly, Nancy Reisman said. Then, who’d have believed it, there are Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, the bridal couple themselves. And then, the queen--she’s there too, moving through the crowd, shaking hands.

By this time, Jerry Reisman had made his way to the front and “I shook her hand too.”

“Then someone turned to us,” Nancy Reisman said, “and said, ‘Isn’t it incredible. They’re really good for doubles.’ ”

The Reismans roared with laughter. They should have known, she said: “The queen was wearing an awful lot of makeup.”

“But I’ve got the whole thing on film,” Jerry Reisman added, and “when we get home, why, I’m going to show it and not tell anybody.”

But the Reismans are missing the big event today. They had to get back to New York on Tuesday for visiting day at their children’s summer camp.

“You’ve got to have your priorities,” Nancy Reisman said. “Princess Di would do the same thing.”

That’s probably as close as almost any American will get to the Royal Family this week. True, Nancy Reagan is in London specifically for the wedding at Westminster Abbey today. And a native Californian, Arleen Auger, who was graduated from Cal State Long Beach, before she left the United States to pursue a musical career in Europe in 1967, will be one of two soloists in the ceremony. However, the rest of America will undoubtedly be best represented on the streets.

The fact of the matter is the royal wedding guest list is as top secret as the design of Fergie’s wedding dress. All Buckingham Palace will say is that the British Royal Family and the other European royal families have been invited. The U.S. Embassy would confirm that Ambassador Charles H. Price was attending, but its press office was not so sure about his wife. Movie stars, celebrities, any other Americans at all? The Usual Sources (florist, publicist, restaurateurs) knew of no one--including themselves--going to the wedding. “I don’t think they (the bridal couple) actually know any Americans, do they?” one veteran American expatriate said. “And, of course, it’s not like the last time--when Charles and Diana were married. What is Andrew? Fourth in line to the throne? That doesn’t have the same cachet.”

Not that Americans don’t care. A royal wedding is great fun and as restaurateur Bob Payton observed, “Nobody does it better than the British.” Payton is a transplanted Chicagoan whose five very un-American restaurants have been so successful here that he was the Token American on the July 4 edition of Great Britain’s version of “Good Morning America.” His restaurants have nothing special planned. “Our next big hoopla will be for the Chicago Bears-Dallas Cowboys game. They’re our royalty.” But Payton nevertheless plans to be on the Mall watching the Royal Procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey--along with some expected half a million tourists.

(The real British, according to Melinda Saeed, who handles public relations for the restaurant Tony Roma’s in London, watch royal events on television.)

It would appear that a royal wedding is simply an extra special tourist attraction. Great fun if you happen to be here and of course you want to be a part of the festivities, joining the throng to the procession, tippling a few beers in a pub afterward. Except, of course, if it rains. Then, said Joseph Wright of Northboro, Mass., who was standing in line for lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe with his wife, Hilary, “we’ll watch it in our hotel room.”

“I think the Royal Family is a big attraction to visiting London,” said Wayne Wright (no relation) of Laguna Hills, Calif. “I’m of British heritage so maybe it’s more meaningful to me. But probably most Americans see it as kind of a fun thing, pomp and circumstance, all that.” President of a firm that packages professional merchandise and travel incentive programs, Wright had packaged a 12-day tour for the 50 top American dealers of Isuzu cars and had it culminating in London during Royal Wedding Week. He’d even pulled it off so the group could attend their own royal wedding on Monday: Jim Ray, an Isuzu dealer from Fayetteville, Ark., to Carol Kumps, a travel agent from Dallas, Tex.

The Ray-Kumps wedding was the real thing planned as a surprise event during a frantic six weeks before the tour and carried off in medieval dress during a banquet at the Great Foster’s Inn, a renovated manor house in Egham, a suburb of London near Windsor.

Kumps and Ray admit they didn’t think about the tie-in to the royal wedding when they made their initial plans. “But now here we are preempting them (Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew),” Kumps said, adjusting the crown of her wedding costume.

She eyed the sky balefully. Like Sarah Ferguson, she hoped for clear weather. A light sprinkle had already sent the wedding party--among them a professional town crier and an actor dressed as King Henry VIII--hustling for cover.

“Poor Sarah and Andy,” she sighed. “There’s been so much attention, all those rehearsals. I wonder if they’re having any fun. Our wedding will even be a surprise to the guests. Not even our children know.”

Even Arleen Auger, the California soprano who is singing Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate, is only getting a small taste of the Big Event. Invited in June, she had to rearrange her schedule, she said by phone from Amsterdam. So she flew in Tuesday, just in time for a rehearsal. It involved only the musicians. Sarah and Andy rehearsed on Monday. Tuesday night, she attended a party at the U.S. Embassy and today, she was to leave early for the cathedral to wait in the organ loft (“not a very good view, I suspect”) for her cue. It was scheduled to come following the ceremony while the couple was signing the register. From there, it was off to Heathrow Airport and a flight to Cleveland, where she is scheduled to perform in that city’s Blossom Festival.

Why Auger? “I’ve no idea why me,” she said. “I’m really very excited. It never occurred to me that it would be possible for an American, a California girl, to participate in a royal event. I’m assuming it was the director of music at Westminster Abbey who selected me. He may know my records or have heard me in concert.” Singing at a royal wedding wouldn’t be much different from any other concert performance, she said. “I’ve sung so many concerts in churches with TV cameras. That will be no problem.”

In fact the only problem was deciding what to wear. After consultation with her dressmaker in Amsterdam and checking with Buckingham Palace, she selected a long turquoise dress--and no hat.

As far as many British are concerned, the Fergie-Andy nuptials are all very nice--but just second-rate. Not like 1981 when Charles married Diana, said Tony Roma’s Melinda Saeed, “everyone thought ‘My God, this is history. Seeing the heir to the throne get married.’

“Besides,” she added, “I don’t think as many Americans are here as before and Americans whip up a lot of enthusiasm.”

Actually, said Ylva French of the London Visitor and Convention Bureau, though many more Americans were invited to the wedding of Charles and Diana, 1981 was a very slow year for tourism. Their wedding day, however, was declared a public holiday, which brought even more Britons out on the street. The wedding of Andy to Sarah was not declared a holiday, which means the stores will all be open and except for the procession route, life will go on as usual.

And that’s another thing. The sales are on. Harrods, Burberry’s, Gucci--virtually every store in London, an occasion that only happens twice a year. Markdowns so tremendous that a number of people were only half-joking when they said the sales were a greater lure to Europe at this time than the wedding.

Besides, added Jeanne Capranica, a Springfield, Ill., high school student who was in London with the Sound of America, a band made up of students from 39 states just finishing a European tour, “You see the sale signs all over the place, but not much about the wedding.”

Capranica was in the long line outside the Hard Rock Cafe, waiting with some other Sound of America members to get in for lunch. They were scheduled to leave Tuesday, which was too bad but they’d seen the “Today” show setting up its equipment and the BBC, too. And they’d just come from the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace where the band had played “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

“Do you think that was in honor of Mrs. Reagan?” Capranica asked.

A bit closer to the front of the Hard Rock Cafe line, Hilary Wright could only laugh. “You know you read about the wedding in all the papers and see all the TV cameras around Buckingham Palace, but we were here two years ago and aside from the media nothing seems different.”