Royal wedding: Who's having a party? Poopers outweigh troopers

Published on Saturday 23 April 2011 11:17

IN A SMALL corner of Shetland, one of the last outposts of the United Kingdom and a place rarely known for royalist sentiments, Elspeth Bisset is already hanging out the bunting.

Bisset and her partner Robert Manson are celebrating their joint 50th birthday parties this Friday not with a few drinks, but by holding a Royal Wedding themed party in the town hall. There will be Union Flag bunting and Royal Family face masks, a wedding cake with Kate and William figurines and red, white and blue button-holes for each of their 60 guests. They will dance the Grand Old Duke of York and the women will come in their old wedding dresses, the men in top hats and tails. They have, in Bisset's words, "really gone for it".

"I'm not a royalist" she says. "Though I did follow Charles and Diana because they were a smiliar age to me, and I've always had a great affection for William and Harry. William and Kate just look such a lovely young couple and I think everyone is going to wish them the very best."

It is a surprising declaration from a part of the British empire more often associated with Scandinavian culture than English, yet one that can be found in pockets all across Scotland. It is estimated there will be just under 30 officially approved private street parties held in the country on the day itself - nothing compared to the 5,000 or so expected across England, but more than one might perhaps expect from a nation that has for many years been lukewarm to the Royal Family.

Most of the street parties are in Edinburgh, where the council has received 20 applications. "As home to the Queen's official Scottish residence, Edinburgh has a long-cherished tradition of marking important royal occasions," points out Lord Provost George Grubb.

For others, however, the reasons for blowing up the balloons and chucking a few sausage rolls in the oven are more basic. "It's been such a hard winter and everyone was quite low at Christmas, it's just a good excuse for a party," says Emma Niven, owner of Loch Leven's Larder, which will be holding a long-table street party with big screens set up so diners can watch the wedding while munching on cucumber sandwiches and being waited on by footmen in fancy dress.

"I think Scotland has really got behind it and everyone is really enthusiastic," she says. "We've been amazed at how positive the reaction has been. Everyone wants to watch it and everyone wants to have a party."

Not quite everyone, perhaps. When it was announced in February that Shettleston, a tough, working-class area of Glasgow not known for its love of the aristocracy, was to hold a Royal Wedding street party, there were a number of raised eyebrows across Scotland.Perhaps then, it was inevitable that just a few weeks later, the event was cancelled due to lack of interest.

Tony Jaconelli, 77, chairman of the Shettleston Historical Society, which attempted to organise the party, lamented: "In this neck of the woods, a street party about celebrating anything to do with royalty is a bit of a no-no.

"If it had been about Celtic or Rangers winning the treble, I guess there would have been a lot of demand.

"There is some support for the royal couple but not to the extent of having a street party so we gave up on the idea"

For vast swathes of Glasgow, the Royal Wedding is simply not happening. Although a handful of restaurants are offering special menus, and the O2 ABC venue is holding a Royal Wedding party at its nightclub which describes itself, tongue firmly in cheek, as "the Regal Indie night", in the rest of the west of the country it remains something of a non-event.

This is in sharp contrast to St Andrews, where the couple met and spent four years at university, and are affectionately viewed as the town's "own" future Royal Couple.

"The couple are very dear to St Andrews," says Daniel Pereira, general manager of the Old Course Hotel, St Andrews, which is holding a special jazz brunch on the day (legend has it that one night in the hotel's bar, Prince William professed his love of jazz to the hotel's American owner, Herb Kohler). "We wouldn't normally celebrate an occasion like this but it seemed fitting, in this case, to mark the event."

Elsewhere in St Andrews, there will be an enormous wedding breakfast, with 1,500 attendees sitting down to watch the wedding in St Salvator's Quadrangle, part of the venerable university itself, with money raised going to charities favoured by the couple. Other hotels and restaurants in the town are holding lunches and breakfasts, and St Andrews itself is anticipating a mini economic boom because of the number of tourists expected on the day.

But perhaps the most reserved, and respectful Royal Wedding celebration in Scotland will take place behind royal doors. At Balmoral, the Queen's Aberdeenshire home, the sovereign has asked staff to erect big screens so that both they and visitors - who will be served strawberries and cream on the 50,000 acre estate - can watch the big event in style.

Curtseying, one assumes, will be optional.

EMMA COWING