Kate Middleton and Prince William attend a wedding in October 2010. — Indigo/Getty Images

Few things will compel me to get out of bed at o'dark-thirty in the morning: the pop of gunfire, the heat of a house fire, the caterwaul of a baby distraught and the blast of trumpets announcing the Wedding of the Century. That's how news anchors the world over referred to the July 29, 1981, union between Lady Diana Spencer and the Prince of Wales.

See also: Counterpoint on the Royal Wedding by Bernard Ohanian

A reported 750 million people — many who got up before the chickens — watched Princess Diana, bundled in taffeta, exit a for-real glass carriage. Thousands of spectators lining the streets erupted into cheers, waving the British flag and calling out her name. And in the predawn darkness of a Portland, Ore., apartment, dressed in flannels, I joined in their merriment.

Inching closer to the small TV sitting atop the plywood and cinder-block shelves, I strained to see every embroidered element of Diana's storybook dress. The first of many tears fell when she reached for her father's arm, just before their walk down the aisle of St. Paul's Cathedral. There was such a loving tenderness shared between those two.

It saddens me that the People's Princess — as Diana was so affectionately called — will miss such moments with her son as Prince William weds the lovely Kate Middleton on Friday morning. I can't help but think of how proud she would be of the men her sons have become. It is through them that Princess Diana's legacy lives on.

Can you imagine how much she would have liked Kate? She is a "common" girl who appears to embody many of the personality traits that endeared Princess Diana to us — humor, grace, beauty, compassion, humility and independence. Oh, the late-night talks those two women could have shared.

I'll be watching this royal wedding, too, but with a different sort of googly-eyed wonder than I did that first one. Oh, I'll still oohh and ahhh over all the people wearing their finest clothes — the rainbow of silk suits and matching pumps, the uniformity of red coats adorned with shiny brass buttons. And I suspect I'll get all muddled at the sight of the beaming bride and her proud prince.

But it's the message of marriage I'll be considering this time round.

"A marriage is good news," says the Archbishop of Canterbury, "because it says something so deep about our humanity. It tells us we can have grounds for hope. That there are still people around who want to spend their lives with each other, who want to make this great act of generous commitment to one another."