Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s wedding, witnessed by millions of people, was a game-changer for Britain’s royal family.
The 2018 nuptials set an unprecedented bar for diversity, inclusiveness (relatively speaking, of course) and modernity, the divorced American actress bride ushering in a new era that gently floated into the chapel on the tail of her 16-foot-long silk veil.
But for all the nouveau moments that rattled the usual gilded cage, part of what we love about these royal extravaganzas, complete with fairy-tale love stories and castles and diamond-encrusted tiaras, is actually the consistency, the lack of change in certain arenas where, if it isn’t broken… there’s no need to fiddle with it.
Case in point: Harry and Meghan’s courtship.
In very modern fashion, they met on a blind date set up by a mutual friend (though if it were truly of the now, they would’ve met on the Internet), and their third date was a safari getaway in Botswana. So that’s a little new for royals, if not celebrities, although since they’re both adults in their 30s (Meghan’s even three years older, also very hip) they had almost all of the freedom and autonomy in the world to really go for it.