Check out where William and Kate's courtship began
When Prince William and Kate Middleton tie the knot in London on Friday, residents of St. Andrews hope to share a piece of the spotlight as the place where the royal couple met and dated.
"One out of 10 St. Andrews students meet their future (spouses) whilst at the university," said Patrick Laughlin, manager of the St. Andrews Partnership, a business-community organization. The figure was famously quoted by a head of the University of St. Andrews during William and Kate's 2005 graduation ceremony.
"They call this town the most romantic place to study in the world," Laughlin added.
While residents of Middleton's south England hometown grudgingly weigh the pros and cons of the sudden media and tourist attention, the people of St. Andrews -a coastal Scottish town otherwise known for world-class golf courses -are used to being part of Royal Family legend by now. "It's been phenomenal. It's been just a repeat, really, of what happened when Prince William arrived to do his university studies," Laughlin said. "At that time, the media interest around the world (was) enormous."
Prince William's relationship with the Scottish town of 15,000, which lies about 80 kilometres north of Edinburgh, has been well-documented and good for business since the then-teenage heartthrob began studying at the University of St. Andrews in 2001. In anticipation of his arrival, property and rental prices in the area spiked, while applications to the university shot up by nearly 50 per cent.
Now, the town is counting on the benefits of renewed attention as TV crews from the BBC and elsewhere broadcast the community's wedding-day festivities to the world as a sidebar to the actual ceremony at Westminster Abbey.
"Two billion people will see footage of this wedding, and our town as well," said Laughlin, who is helping run St. Andrews' Royal Wedding Breakfast, expected to draw about 1,500 guests to the 600-year-old university's historic St. Salvator's Quadrangle.
St. Andrews has been on Visit-Britain's list of go-to places since William and Kate announced their engagement last year. The country's tourism promotion agency suggests visitors discover the story behind the royal romance while making a "pilgrimage" to the St. Andrews Links.
"St. Andrews has been a bit more high-profile because of the wedding," said Lindsey Adam, president of the St. Andrews Merchants' Association.
Leading up to the royal wedding day, stores along Market Street -St. Andrews' main drag -will take part in a competition to "try to get all the shops in town to make their windows festive and colourful and royal-themed," Adam said.
"There's definitely a bit of royal fever going on," she said. "There's everything, I'm amazed. It's getting very silly. You can't say we're ignoring the occasion."
A local bakery has produced edible screens of the royal couple's pictures to place atop cupcakes. In Adam's shop, Bonkers, there's wedding-themed picnic ware for sale, and a solar-powered Queen Elizabeth II figurine (solar power enables the pocket-sized doll to offer a royal wave).
"People love it or they hate it," Adam said. "In Scotland maybe we're not always as royalist as the rest of the U.K. Quite often the Royal Family is seen to be quite English, (so) not everybody is taking it seriously.
"I don't get any anti-royal feeling, but I think a lot of people are taking it quite lightheartedly. It's a little bit cheeky as well."
Laughlin described locals as dedicatedly "blasé" about having had a future king in their midst for so many years -perhaps a reason, he said, for the prince's choice to study at St. Andrews.
"He would go into Tesco and do his shopping and he would go down to the local pub, and people would not take his picture or ask for his autograph. Not that you'd ask a royal for his autograph."
At the local tourist information centre, however, staff members have long directed visitors from Canada, U.S., Europe and Asia to the prince's choice grocery store, and Ma Bell's, the pub where he watched television sports with other students.
"A lot of the locals (also) have been coming in and asking whereabouts we've seen William. They like to go there as well, just to be where he used to be," said tourism adviser Katie Anderson.
"I saw him in the supermarket once. He just really blended in, you never noticed many bodyguards around him. He wore a baseball cap (and) just looked like anybody else."
