The public loves weddings, especially royal weddings. The public wants to watch them happen, and people keep track of them to see if the royal couples endure and survive, especially when they read AP writers' articles like, "Europe has bad luck with royal marriages."

John Leicester wrote, "From Windsor to Monaco and beyond, many royal marriages have turned sour or been tainted by scandal, with illegitimate children, divorces, sordid affairs and tragedies that tabloids dole up to publics whose appetite for the dirty laundry of royalty is seemingly unquenchable."

However, on the contrary, it's worth reminding them that Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh celebrated their diamond-wedding anniversary in November 2007.

21-year-old Princess Elizabeth married the Royal Navy Lt. Philip Mountbatten, a prince of Greece and Denmark five years her senior and a distant cousin, on Nov. 20, 1947, in London at Church Westminster Abbey. In keeping with wedding traditions, cloth that decorated the altar at the ceremony was both old and borrowed. The cloth, made from embroidered silk and decorated with the royal insignia, was custom-made for the coronation of King George V, the queen's grandfather. The youthful new choir boys who performed at the 1947 ceremony were between 9 and 13 at the time.

Princess Elizabeth and Royal Navy Lt. Phillip tied the knot in front of 2,600 guests. The ceremony that took place 60 years ago dispelled some of the gloom of a post-World War II Britain, where food and other items were still rationed. The royal wedding was a source of optimism in a country struggling to get back on to its feet after the war. Winston Churchill called it "a flash of color on the hard road we travel."

Rationing brought in during the war meant Princess Elizabeth had to save up clothing coupons to buy her wedding dress, like other brides of the time. However, unlike most other brides, the princess had her dress designed by the master courtier Norman Hartnell, the official dressmaker to the royal family. Hartnell based the wedding dress on the painting, "Spring," by the Italian renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli. The costume was made of satin woven from silk from Chinese silkworms and decorated with 10,000 pearls. The princess had eight bridesmaids, led by her sister Princess Margaret. After the ceremony, King George VI, Princess Elizabeth's father wrote a letter to his daughter to let her know how proud he was to watch her walking down the aisle. "You were so calm and composed during the service and said your words with such conviction, that I knew everything was all right," he wrote.

The royal couple received more than 2,500 wedding presents, including a textile from Mahatma Gandhi that the Indian leader had crafted himself and a casket-shaped crystal vase and cover from U.S. President Harry S. Truman.

The former queen of Malta, when it was still a British possession, Queen Elizabeth is known to cherish the time they spent on Malta, the Meditation island, as a young couple, out of Britain and out of the spotlight in the years before she inherited the throne in 1952 at 25.

Though every marriage is a public event, this couple has lived more than others in the full light of publicity. It's not only a marriage, but also the relationship between monarch and people, which the queen has upheld by a clear sense of God's calling and enabling, is awe-inspiring.

The queen's toast during the 80th birthday bash ("I doubt whether any of us can say that the last 80 years has been fair sailing, but we give thanks to our health and happiness, the support we receive from our family and friends, for the wonderful memories and excitement that each new day brings.") hints at the ordeal she has gone through. Obviously, without forsaking her beliefs and principles, she has gotten along with the changing times by understanding and accepting responsibility. Winston Churchill said, "Responsibility is the price of greatness." This queen has paid the price to achieve greatness. She stands uniquely as the longest married monarch in British history, upholding her father's words that were written 60 years ago, "I knew everything was all right."

• Mandakini Hiremath is a Claflin instructor and coordinator of the university's writing center.

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