Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : MISCELLANY / NEWSMAKERS AND MILESTONES

Residents of Orange County--which some claim is as much a plutocracy as a democracy--were not left out of the British aristocracy’s social event of the season, the marriage of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.

Pat Stewart, originally from the Isle of Man and now of Costa Mesa, celebrated last Wednesday over buttered scones at Tea and Sympathy in Costa Mesa, an antique-filled shop where videotapes of the 2 a.m. (PDT) wedding ceremonies were shown.

She attributed the great interest in the royal nuptials in the United States to “a sense of history. We’re talking not 200 years, but 800 or 900 years,” Stewart said. Royalty “is something money can’t buy.”

Stewart’s mother, Kathleen Duggan of Tustin, suggested that Americans are fascinated with royalty “because they don’t have any.”

At the British and Dominion Social Club in Garden Grove, a dance the Saturday night before the wedding honored the couple, and a videotape replay was scheduled for Wednesday night.

Videotapes were not good enough for club president Beryl Pearson. “I stayed up all night,” she said. “I thought it was marvelous, just beautiful.”