When I said I know far too much royal trivia, I wasn't kidding...
Royal (enthusiast) by birth
Like most young American girls in the '90s, I grew up listening to my mom and sisters doting on all things Princess Diana. One of my earliest pop culture memories was Diana's famous Panorama interview, and the subsequent frenzy. I had paper dolls of Diana and my sisters and I would lay on our bedroom's floor, flipping through magazines featuring Diana, as a poster of Prince William hung above us on the wall.
So it's not a surprise, per se, that I have an exorbitant amount of brain space filled with British Royal knowledge.
And during days as a journalism student, I dreamt of someday being one of the go-to royal correspondents for the world; the ones the fly in to London to be THE authority on all-things royal...
*Spoiler alert* that dream did not exactly come to fruition.
But(!) I have done some pretty fun things as a royal blogger as a hobby.
The Meme that started it all
While following the Royal Australia/NZ tour of 2014, I saw the perfect snap of Kate Middleton sailing and decided to meme it, posting it to my now defunct royal tumblr. It started getting reblogged like crazy and suddenly I was seeing it all over royal Pinterest boards and Twitter.
My Buzzfeed debut
In honor of the three year anniversary of William and Kate's 2011 wedding, I wrote this post for Buzzfeed.
Duchess-at-Large is launched
As I began to get more involved in the online royal blogging community, I decided to take the leap and start my own royal blog, Duchess-at-Large, in the summer of 2014.
From current royal happenings to royal rules and protocol and beyond, I covered a vast range of topics. It quickly amassed a following and though I haven't kept it regularly updated the past years, it still maintains steady traffic from all over the world.
500,000 views & counting...
On a fateful day in July 2017, I was able to not only see William and Kate in person, but *speak* with both of them, as well.
*internal squealing intensifies*
I posted this video (Instagram won't let me embed it here, sorry!), which went viral within the royal-watcher community pretty quickly. It was picked up by a few "bigger" royal blogs, and in total has amassed more than 500,000 views.
And, if you're wanting know more about that crazy day, you can read about it all here. ;)
So even though I didn't end up reporting on the royals professionally...
I'd say I've had a pretty good run of success as an amateur royal-watcher from Kansas City. ; )