Baffling
I have a feeling you are spot-on. I think it all seems so old fashioned and romantic to most Americans. Frankly, it seems like a collosal waste of money and resources to me.
It's doing no harm. These people get a nice wedding, and the tourist industry will get a boost. I would be very surprised indeed if, in total, the tourist income from the event were less than the cost of the event itself.
To be honest, this is one of the nicer ways we could spend taxpayers money - I'd rather this than spending it on MPs' expenses, bankers' bonuses, or killing people in the Middle East.
I've always been of the opinion that the royals do little good, but certainly no harm. They attract tourists, and would hopefully act as a last resort to block a total government takeover by a lunatic - I doubt the queen would give assent to that - but that's an unlikely event. But tourism gets a boost. And since my town was built entirely out of fish and tourists, I'm not going to say anything bad about tourism ;-)
To quote Dendodge: "To be honest, this is one of the nicer ways we could spend taxpayers money" - Yes, it is. But approximately £5 Billion pounds worth of it? On a wedding between 2 young people, in a time when Britain is supposed to be going through "austerity" measures? Fuck that for a lark.
They'd have been just as well finding a registry office, or buggering off to Gretna Green than wasting all that money on an event which is gonna give absolutely cack all back to the people.
The taxpayer gets the bill, the businesses get the profit. We won't see a penny of what's made from today's extravagorgeout.
£5 billion? I don't know the actual cost, but it can't have been anything near that high. Taxpayer's money was only paying for security and transport, the rest was covered by the families. I do know that the cost of security for the Pope's visit last year was about £10 million, and security for the 2009 G20 hobnob in London was roughly £7 million. The wedding would surely be a similar order of magnitude.
There may also be a loss to the total economy because of the extra bank holiday, but how much (and whether it is countered by extra tourism, memorabilia etc.) is a matter of debate: http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/how-much-did-royal-wedding-cost-britain-1055/