Why We Care: The Royal Wedding

This blog is for all the men who ask me, "Why do you care?" in regards to the Royal Wedding, so instead of explaining it over and over I can just refer to them here.

So, why do we (women) care?

It's a good question first off. I can see why my boyfriend and several other guys have asked that question. I know why they give us strange looks when we tell them that we're getting up at 4 a.m. to watch it on television. I understand they think it's ridiculous we keep our noses behind computer screens and scroll through all the wedding details and look at the photos of Kate and William. Guys, trust me, I get it. I know what you're thinking. But if you really want to understand why we care, it starts long before Kate and William ever even met.

About 15 years ago I was six years old, growing up in a red-bricked cape-cod house in the suburbs of Cincinnati. I had a father who was off delivering packages for UPS and a mother who stayed at home to take care of me and my two younger sisters. I had a wild-eyed imagination and like many little girls I had one inspiration to fuel it: Disney.

Disney was the source for all childhood dreams. My sisters and I watched Disney movie after Disney movie. Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid... you name it, we had it. And we ate it up. We loved the idea of these beautiful women getting swept off their feet by the handsome prince. We dreamed of what it would be like if we were those princesses trapped in the tower, waiting for the day our knight in shining armor would come to rescue us. Men, if you want to know why women care so much about romance and why we want to look like a princess on our wedding day, you can blame Disney.

And that was how most of my childhood was spent. I believed that love was being a damsel in distress and the most perfect guy in the world would come along and save me. A lot of little girls grew up thinking real life could be a fairytale.

Until that fatal day we realized it's not.

I'm not sure when it struck me that my ideas on the matter of love were not realistic. Perhaps it was as early as third grade when I had a crush on a kid in my class and he didn't seem to want anything to do with me. Or eighth grade when I had my first "boyfriend" and we said I love you over AIM (real romantic, right?). Or maybe it was tenth grade when I got up the nerve to ask a guy to homecoming and he told me no. Either way, somewhere along the way I realized love, and men, weren't what I made them out to be.

Now that doesn't mean that love isn't all it's hyped up to be. I still believe it's very possible to live happily-ever-after. It just doesn't come as easily as expected. Men don't ride white stallions, we don't receive invitations to fancy balls, and love at first sight is, in my opinion, a myth. We usually don't get to see our Disney dreams come true.

But tomorrow morning, at 4 a.m. Eastern time, we do.

I doubt Prince William and Kate Middleton's relationship has been anything like a fairytale. In fact it seems rather normal. They met in college, became friends, dated, broke up, dated again, and so on (according to my sources via the internet). But tomorrow we will witness a fairytale. Kate will marry a Prince. And women all over the world will be celebrating it.

So men, don't roll your eyes when you hear us gush about her dress or talk of how handsome Prince William looks. Don't give me a funny look when you hear I'll be setting my alarm at 3:50 a.m. Even if you still don't get it, just understand that this is something we have to do. It's for the little girl we once were, who just wanted to see her fairytale dreams come true.