Windows & balconies with a view of Westminster Abbey are being sold for up to £100,000 – purely for the day of the Royal Wedding, according to a report in The Times.
This is not just a reflection of the price-of-everything mentality of our age. The Times of 1863 carried classified advertisements for windows which could give up to a dozen people a close-up view of the wedding of Prince Albert Edward (Edward VII-to-be) to Princess Alexandra, yours for a mere 30 shillings.
Cheap at twice the price – even a Second Class passage on a ship to New York would have set you back at least £12, & four years later people were complaining that "telegraphic messages" to the USA cost £10 for 20 words.
Mind you, the windows on offer in 1863 were only in Windsor, not the heart of London, since the wedding took place there in St George’s Chapel, as was the royal custom.
There were however great celebrations in London too, though the plan to illuminate St Paul’s was a failure.
Young Lucy Lyttelton (soon to become Lady Frederick Cavendish after her own wedding a year later) was present at St George’s, braved the crowds in London that night, & gave a breathless account of it all in her diary, not entirely sure that it had been ‘worth the hours of jam and wedge’.
