When Harry wed Meghan

The Royals remain the best brand ambassador of the UK and when it comes to weddings, history, ceremony and national pride, they give their subjects and taxpayers more bang for the money than any form of publicity or advertising campaign. “When Harry wed Meghan” they probably did more to revive romance and the notion or belief that dreams do come true for all the Disneyland princess types out there. They crossed the racial, economic and historical lines and now challenge countries and peoples to rethink their mentality towards skin color, divorcees, and class status.

For me, this most recent royal wedding was more than entertainment, it was a coach full of lessons that we could all learn from especially those in power, celebrities, and public office. For starters: Dress the part and dress for the occasion. I noticed from the TV coverage that even ordinary people who came to watch the entourage drive by, all dressed up like guests invited for the garden party. The residents of the area even “dressed up” their front gardens and hung up buntings. Even the reporters, correspondents and TV hosts including those in remote locations or in a different country dressed as if they were at the wedding. Mind you, they dressed in their best and not with a “Puede na” mentality or come as you are. As a result, they ALL looked great and impressive. Hard to imagine so much flair and elegance in a such a subdued and tasteful manner.

As a nation we need to start or re-start somewhere. There was a time when homeowners personally looked after the front yard or had an interest or concern on how their frontage looked like. It was a reflection of your character and worth. If your front yard was dirty you were deemed dirty or messy. If you did not fix or invest on your frontage you were deemed cheap and irresponsible. Nowadays, homeowners rely mostly on the initiative of helpers and in a time when domestic helpers are hard to get, people rely on street sweepers and garbage collectors to look after the mess. Mind you, there is no distinction here about class or wealth. I drive through several exclusive villages in Metro Manila and even the richest seem to have lost the sense of value and respect for their community by letting their properties get run down.

I suppose that’s one of the advantages of having high walls, but people can still see how your talahib grows. If the DILG gets some free time from focusing on the mess in Boracay, God-willing, they might find some time to tell newly elected barangay officials to visit and call out property owners who have been negligent in maintaining their front yards, painting walls and placing visible house numbers. “A man’s castle is his home” they say, but if the place looks more like a pigsty – what then do you call the owner?

In the past, when people like Loren Legarda or Tingting Cojuangco wore tribal costumes or vintage clothes, the only people who praised them were the fashionistas of fashionably “aware.” Others would simply criticize them for over doing it. Ironically their fashion statements have been visually imprinted into my memory which means that those cultural fashion statements had impact aside from flair. Perhaps Loren and Ting-Ting were ahead of their time, but now that Cosplay and millennials are redefining fashion boundaries, maybe we can tweak or give the cultural theme a second look. Time for our fashionistas to restyle official uniforms of the military and the police alongside tribal and historical costumes. A lot of people noticed that even the military officials and personnel had special uniforms for such occasions. That’s what history buffs in government should work on how to incorporate culture, color, and history into such formal wear or uniforms instead of having a Filipino version of what colonizers handed down to us.

No matter what your past mistakes or buffoonery,  people will watch and speak of who you are now as long as you carry yourself with dignity and respectability. I’m sure that many of the characters at the wedding had some baggage, label or history but they left it at home or in the trash bin. People only talked about how dignified guests carried themselves, how down to earth and transparent they were or how the couple looked at each other with so much love. It was also a reflection of how polite the Brits can be and respectful of circumstance even the media. A royal wedding was not the time and place to talk about taking out the trash or talking trash.

Aside from the royals and the entourage, a lot of praise was given to the castles, gardens, church and almost all the “magnificent” edifices covered. They were not called “old,” they did not look “old,” again they were impressive. We have a handful of structures aged and similar but here they are just “old” because we don’t have a Prince like Charles who champions the preservation or restoration of such.  We have civil servants tasked to care and promote the preservation of such sites but a number of them seem more concerned with keeping their jobs than doing their jobs. Even worse time and money meant for architectural history has time and again been “re-aligned” to political PR or promoting beauty pageants. If we can’t fix up the historical sites just yet, can we all pitch in and fix our front yards? If change is coming let it start with us individually. And let us all work at making all our dreams come true (even if there is one less eligible Prince and one less beautiful Duchesse on the market!). God bless!

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