The Royal Wedding obsession

Get this: For $4,000, you can send your 8-year-old daughter to a princess boot camp — one of many that have sprung up prior to the April 29 nuptials of Prince Edward and Kate Middleton.

One in particular gathers wannabe princesses at a posh London hotel to teach them how to curtsy properly and what to say to the Queen, should these taffeta-wearing tweens ever cross her path in the buffet line.

We are obsessed with the Royal Wedding. Obsessed! You can’t turn on the TV without getting an update about William and Kate, where they’re planning to get hitched, who’s in her bridal party, what will she be wearing? We just can’t stop!

The royal couple is so lucrative, for example, Lifetime is airing a docuseries on them. Newspapers and TV stations have created special blogs centered around the wedding. And there’s even a “For Dummies” edition about the Royal Wedding. I’m not kidding.

More than 2 billion — BILLION — people are expected to watch the event live. It’s said to be more anticipated than Princess Diana’s fateful marriage in 1981 to Prince Charles, which was watched by about the same number of people.

But why?

Is it because we love a good romance? Are we just fascinated with royalty? Or are we desperate — after last month’s devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, among other awful things going on in the world — for some good, uplifting news?

What do you think?