Sometime around 3 a.m. Friday, Joan Giblin and her sister-in-law Kathy Tiso will slip on their wide-brimmed hats and head toward Buckingham Palace.
They hope the other women in their family will be so inclined but maybe not. It’s such an ungodly hour to be going anywhere.
Either way, Giblin, her three daughters, sister-in-law and a few other women from their family will be joining an estimated 2 billion people expected to watch Prince William and Kate Middleton wed.
For Giblin, at least, there won’t be much reminiscing about previous royal weddings. When the world stopped to watch Lady Diana Spencer marry Prince Charles 30 years ago, Giblin was so busy having babies she barely remembers it.
“I don’t think I even watched it,” the 61-year-old Decatur grandmother said.
But as soon as the announcement of this engagement was made public, Giblin got on the phone with the women in her family and said let’s go.
They had the will, the frequent flier miles and a place to stay. Giblin has a cousin who lives in Kensington, about a mile from Buckingham Palace.
“We booked everything right then and there,” she said.
And so sometime around 11 a.m. Tuesday, Giblin and Tiso, a resident of Hilton Head, S.C., boarded a Delta Air Lines jet to New York's JFK, where their daughters, Allison Giblin, 35, also of Decatur; recently engaged Ashley Giblin, 30, of Atlanta; Meredith Weis, 32, of Sandy Springs; and Amy Tiso of New York, were scheduled to meet them for a late evening flight to London. The women and two other female relatives are expected to arrive there Wednesday morning.
“It’s going to be a zoo,” Giblin said. “I don’t think we’ve ever done anything this crazy.”
As a nurse practitioner, Giblin said this is not the sort of thing she’d normally do, but “as I get older, it’s the way I like to operate."
Although Giblin has visited the country on several occasions, this will be her first trip with her daughters since they were adults.
The women will spend the entire week there, touring the Cotswolds in a rented van, pampering themselves at spa hotels and sampling London pubs for the best place to drink beer after the wedding.
On the big day, they will all don their hats and make their way to Buckingham Palace, hoping to get a glimpse of the royal couple.
Tiso and another cousin, both of whom are barely 5 feet tall, will bring along the 14-inch periscopes they purchased online so they’ll be able to see above the crowd.
Giblin, who stands 5 feet 11 inches, doesn’t think seeing will be a problem for her.
After the wedding, they will, of course, head to one of the pubs as planned for beer and lunch.
“I can hardly wait,” Giblin said. "It’s going to be such an adventure, such fun.”
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