I did not say the sermon was 'a small detail.' Apparently, that's your misinterpretation of my observations
@Zaira. Everyone can certainly hold fast to their particular views of M&H's wedding, just as there is a tendency to do regarding the phenomenon of Meghan and Harry in general. ? Unless and until I hear it directly and officially that M&H viewed video of Curry beforehand, I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that they even felt it was necessary. They accepted Archbishop Welby's judgement on this. It's obviously traditional for the Archbishop to decide which ministers will perform which functions during a royal wedding. I believe the Archbishop himself (obviously a different individual) gave the address at Diana/Charles' wedding in 1981.
Of course Welby was familiar with Curry, but I seriously doubt they were fast friends. When it was reported that Welby said Curry was a dynamic speaker, it was phrased that he'd heard Curry was a dynamic speaker.
I think Harry and Meghan had the exact wedding they wanted. It don't think they were ever trying to go for grand traditional royal wedding. The only unintended misstep might have been the preacher going on for a bit longer than scheduled but I am sure they saw the humour in it and joked about that with everyone later on in the day.
The decision of the preacher made sense to me perfectly the moment I saw Doria listening to the preacher because you can tell she really enjoyed the Sermon. I am sure that mattered more to Harry and Meghan than him running a few minutes over the allotted time. I also find reaction to the preacher to be rooted in cultural differences. People who are used to that style of preaching were able to tune into his message and found it to be very beautiful and one of the best highlights of the wedding. Those who weren't could not get past the dramatics and found themselves waiting for it to end.
Curry said the couple knew exactly what they wanted and in fact had the reading ready for him when they met him.
Charles recommended the King's Choir but the choir talked about how Harry and Meghan worked closely with the choir so they sounded exactly how they wanted it to. They said they worked with them closely and worked through many different rendition (I think 10) of Stand by Me and provided tons of feedback to keep tweaking until they finally felt it was the version that was right for their wedding.
I am not sure how much say Harry and Meghan had in the camera angles for the broadcast but even the way it was filmed other than a shot or two when going down the aisle and walking back out. The camera stuck to very close intimate angles. You very rarely saw all of the church in all its splendor in comparison to Sophie and Edward's wedding where a lot of shots were focused on showing the magnitude of the building.
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That you feel Curry was 'joked about later in the day,' is your opinion with no way for you to know unless you happened to be a fly on the wall. ? It's Kingdom Choir, btw. That's cool about M&H working with them to perfect the rendition. It was a great job, slightly overshadowed by Curry's carrying on, IMO. For some people full of emotional investment regarding this royal wedding, everything was A-okay perfection. I'm just able to take a step back and be objective, even about my own emotional reactions. I try to qualify my comments based on official reports and common sense. A lot of what you are saying, and what all of us feel variously is based on emotions. My initial reactions to Bishop Curry, I recognize, were based on emotions. I was looking for something uplifiting that more specifically celebrated Meghan & Harry personally. I did not get that. But I knew as it was happening that all would be forgiven. No one would overly complain. There was a lot of overprotectiveness shown toward Bishop Curry by the American commentators and media. That was because it was considered not kosher to criticize a black American minister in any way, shape or form.
I happpen to be a WOC, and I was raised in an African American culture and in Baptist and Methodist churches in the midwest. So please, not all black ministers should be lumped together as one entity. They each have different personalities, different strengths and weaknesses, just as do ministers and priests of every denomination. Also, surprise surprise, not all black people in the world should be lumped together either as one entity having the same exact experiences and cultural references across the board.
Of course M&H selected Song of Solomon, and that's the scripture Curry based his address on. But he's the one who wrote the address he gave, and then he inserted additional scripture and ML King quotes, and ad-libbed and over-performed, which was not exactly what M&H were expecting. The King quotes were fine, but ML King or even President Obama could have done a better job in the delivery.
In addition, I detect a great deal of over-protectiveness or ownership toward Meghan being shown in some quarters by a variety of royal observers, which I find fascinating. Many people (similar to you) seem to have the overblown notion that everything went exactly according to Meghan's desires. I seriously doubt that. M&H had control over a great many details, but they did not get direct oversight on every single detail. On the things that mattered most, I'm quite sure they were blissfully happy. Bishop Curry's unexpected delivery was surprising, but ultimately not a cause for any serious hand-wringing. Most likely, the late after-wedding reception hosted by Prince Charles was the most enjoyable and memorable part of celebrating their union, not the least because it was private without any gawking intrusion by the public or the media.
As far as the camera angles, M&H surely had no input there. They would have had to leave that up to the network and the camera technicians. The most Harry was involved in was limiting journalists to a few handpicked to be inside the church. And the camera crew were unfortunately constricted by the way the church is constructed inside. I think there were a number of cameras situated at different spots, so I'm hopeful that the edited version on DVD is a good one. I've seen several Youtube versions that look slightly different due to different editing of the BBC footage. At one point, when Meghan arrived at the church entrance, a camera took a longshot from behind Harry and William to a view of Doria's reaction. But then Prince Harry moved and suddenly obscured Doria, spoiling a good view of her reaction. All we saw was the back of Harry's head, which I'm quite sure he was not interested in being prominently shown.
The camera moved during the livestream quite often to ceiling views showing the magnificence of the chapel, but it was annoyingly overdone at times. Quite clearly, there are different versions of the wedding circulating around that show different views, due to after-the-fact editing. I've seen a version where there were more intimate shots of M&H and less of the constant cutting to particular celebrities' faces that we saw happen too many times during the livestream.