‘Happiest Day of Our Lives’: The World’s Press Reacts to the Royal Wedding

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Bobby Yip/Reuters

Diners sit in front of a giant screen showing a live broadcast of Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding ceremony in a pub in Hong Kong April 29, 2011.

NewsFeed linked arms around the globe on Friday, getting up early on both sides of the Atlantic to watch the royal wedding. But it’s one thing gauging reaction in the U.K. and the U.S., but what did the rest of the world and its media think?

On the other side of the planet, all four of Australia’s TV networks devoted blanket coverage to the wedding between the (now) Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. There were thousands of parties and the Sydney Morning Herald had a suitably simple headline: “United in hope for their kingdom.” And their near neighbors in New Zealand were even more ebullient, as the New Zealand Herald called it the “Happiest Day of Our Lives” on its front page.

(More on TIME.com: See pictures of Kate Middleton’s dress)

Kenya will forever play a key part in William and Catherine’s lives, as it’s where he popped the question last year. In a sweet gesture, red roses picked from the Rift Valley town of Naivasha were handed out by the Kenya Tourism Board. A restaurant in Karen (a Nairobi suburb home to some of Kenya’s oldest white families) showed the wedding and must have known their audience, seeing that they served up some quintessential British treats such as high tea and scones, Pimms and Champagne, all the while surrounded by Union flags and bunting.

Perhaps somewhat more surprisingly, there was a healthy amount of TV coverage over in China, with the Beijing News newspaper’s two-page spread splashing, “Britain’s Cinderella Marries Her Prince Today.” That said, there wasn’t a single word about the wedding in the People’s Daily, which is the official newspaper of the Communist party.

(More on TIME.com: See pictures of the wedding day)

But in India, it was a different matter entirely, as an editorial in The Times of India said that the royal wedding has revived interest in the British monarchy following the “circus” of Prince Charles’ doomed marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales (to be fair, the same could probably be argued in Britain too). What’s more, William and Catherine represent “love that dares to hope above difficulties.” A lofty aim indeed.

But just to show that you can’t please all the people, all the time, Russian tabloid newspaper Tvoi Den remarked that the nuptials meant that oligarch Yevgeny Chichvarkin wouldn’t be able to access his yacht which is moored in London, while another wealthy exile, Boris Berezovsky, couldn’t get to his office. “The marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton will cause inconvenience for fugitive Russian businessmen (in London),” the paper reported. If only they’d been invited in the first place, perhaps they wouldn’t have got in such a huff. (via the Daily Telegraph)

(More on TIME.com: See TIME’s complete coverage of the royal wedding)