Over the past week, fans of Kate and her prince sent millions of tweets and Facebook comments in anticipation of their big day
The royal wedding has finally come to an end and Kate Middleton has become Catherine Middleton -- once single-syllable Kate now prefers the more, well, royal-sounding version of her first name. She wed Prince William, the second-in-line for the British throne after his father, Charles, Prince of Wales, at London's Westminster Abbey this morning. (To see the event play out, in photographs, visit In Focus.) And, if you were watching, you weren't alone.
Interest in the wedding, which has been in the works for months (years if you count the lengthy courting process) was so great that it can be difficult to tally. To get a sense of just how many people tuned in to hear the "I do's," let's take a look at what facts and figures are available.
After starting to broadcast live with dedicated coverage very early, the BBC's website crashed around 11:13 a.m. BST when traffic to the site grew to a point where it was just too much for the servers to handle. "We are experiencing some technical issues with BBC online," the BBC announced in a press release. "We're investigating and will update when we have more information." The update, which came 17 minutes later -- a lifetime for some royal wedding watchers, eager to track every detail -- confirmed that the outage was due to traffic. "We are experiencing some technical issues with BBC Online due to the sheer weight of traffic which may cause the site to be slower than normal in some cases," the release explained.