The Pimm’s is chilling. The silver set has been dusted off. Now all Shannon Appell has to do is wait 31 days before she can host her own party of the year.
Appell, 47, has already planned a bash to celebrate the April 29 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton — and she’s not even English. “I was talking about the wedding with friends, and it became a good excuse to have a party,” says Appell, an American stylist who lives on the Upper East Side, about her garden fete.
“We will be serving Pimm’s Cup [a British summer cocktail], and I’ve been searching for crumpets and some English high tea things. Hopefully William and Kate will make a go of it and bring back the fabulousness of the monarchy.”
With exactly one month to go before the big day, royal wedding fever has gripped New York City on a scale not seen since Diana and Prince Charles got hitched three decades ago, with hundreds of locals organizing bashes to toast Will and Kate.
American novelist and screenwriter Heywood Gould, 68, is throwing a brunch party at his apartment in Battery Park on the morning of the wedding, which falls a day before the publication of his new book, “The Serial Killer’s Daughter.”
“I’ll be asking my guests, ‘[Who] is the hottest royal in the history of the monarchy?’ ” he jokes. “I hope nobody says Anne Boleyn!” he quips about the beheaded queen.
New Yorkers are also traveling to London to get a piece of the action. An estimated 10 to 20 percent more US tourists are planning to visit Britain’s capital during the last weekend of April compared with the same of April compared with the same time last year.
“We have seen an unprecedented level of interest around the wedding,” says Karen Clarkson, North American VP for VisitBritain, the UK tourism board.
“The response we’ve had has far, far exceeded anything we anticipated. Diana was held very dear to Americans’ hearts, and there’s a natural kind of inquisitiveness in terms of what her son is getting up to. Also, Kate and William are doing things their way, which I think Americans respect.”
For Brits based in NYC, the wedding provides more than a cause for cheer — it’s a commercial lifeline. Nicky Perry, owner of Brit restaurant Tea & Sympathy in the West Village, says the event injected a spike in business after lean months following the closure of nearby St. Vincent’s Hospital last year.
“I thought I was going to go out of business a few months ago,” she says.
“The royal wedding has saved my ass.”
Since the engagement announcement, Perry, 51, has sold a king’s ransom worth of wedding merchandise — including tea mugs emblazoned with Middleton’s face.
“There is no one that hasn’t called me about everything from bath bags to condoms,” Perry says. “I’ve been inundated with phone calls about china and tea towels.” Satirist Stephen Colbert even showed up at her emporium two weeks ago dressed as a British huntsman with royal biographer Hugo Vickers in tow to record a segment for his Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report.”
Meanwhile, many English expats here are throwing breakfast parties and sleepovers to toast the royal couple. Mark Dorosz, who moved to NYC from London eight years ago, will host a brunch for English pals at his Upper East Side apartment.
“Since I’m now over here, going out of my way to toast William and Kate seems
the least I could do,” says Dorosz, 31, who runs new media company SparcPoint.
Best-selling historian Andrew Roberts, who lives on the Upper West Side and will cover the wedding for NBC, says he’s not surprised New Yorkers are swept up in the royal romance.
“It’s going to be as big as the Super Bowl,” says Roberts, 48. “It is reckoned that 50 million Americans are going to watch the wedding.”
He adds, “I really do think that Americans have an emotional connection with the British royal family that they don’t have with the Belgian … or the Danish royal family. It takes our royal family to do this to them.”
Euan Rellie, a Manhattan-based English banker and socialite, says people can more easily relate to William and Kate than to previous royal unions.
“Expat 30- and 40-somethings can identify with them because they’re our generation,” says Rellie, 43.
“It’s a grander version of our university friends getting married. So it’s half celebrity culture and half the England we remember fondly.”
The fact that William is marrying a “commoner” is a key reason for the mania surrounding the union, adds Roberts. “The English see this as the closing of the Diana chapter on the royal story and the opening of a brand-new chapter which is a very hopeful one,” he says. “They have a positive sense that Catherine Middleton comes from the striving, entrepreneurial middle classes, and that is revolutionary with regard to royal weddings. So they’re excited by both the individuals and personalities, but also by the newness of what this means to the royal family.”
But not every Brit in the city is royal wedding-crazy. “I’m not interested in it at all,” says writer Anthony Haden-Guest. “I don’t know either of them. I’m not sure the monarchy will last.”
Still, as royal wedding fever continues to surge in the Big Apple, Perry claims the hype is justified. “The future king and queen are actually getting married!” she says. “This is never going to happen again in our lifetime. Not unless the whole f – – king royal family gets wiped out.”
Save the date!
Poppy de Villeneuve, a Manhattan-based British filmmaker and socialite, describes the royal wedding as “like the English Oscars. It will be a lot of fun.”
And as with the Academy Awards, plenty of New York parties are being planned for the big day, April 29, even though the ceremony starts at 6 a.m. our time. Here are some of the other events being planned across the city . . .
* Tea & Sympathy in the West Village is throwing a “rehearsal dinner” on the eve of the wedding and a weekend of “royal” food, including Coronation Chicken. Putting historical enmity between England and France to one side, the British eatery is also joining forces with French restaurant Lyon, its neighbor on Greenwich Avenue, to host a block party complete with a royal wedding cake created by dessert designer Margaret Braun.
* The highest concentration of VIPs will be at an invite-only breakfast thrown by the British embassy in New York, which looks after royalty when its members visit the city.
* The level of enthusiasm I have already seen in the city is incredible,” Sir Alan Collins, Her Majesty’s consul-general in New York, tells The Post. “Prince William and Miss Middleton hope that their wedding day will be an enjoyable day for as many people as possible, not only in the UK, but also around the world, including right here in New York.”
* The St. George’s Society, which organizes events for patriotic Brits, will host a “wedding bash” the evening of April 29 at the Edison Ballroom in Times Square. Live entertainment and an auction will be featured, along with footage of the royal wedding, presumably as a reminder for any intoxicated Brits who might have forgotten what happened that morning.
* Big Apple Brits, an expat UK networking group, is allying with the DUMBO Improvement District to hold a celebration April 29 from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. The wedding will be shown on a jumbo screen at the archway under the Manhattan Bridge. Outdoor access is free, but an all-day pass inside the DUMBO Lofts costs $50. Organizers are billing the event as “The Biggest Party of the Century, So Far!”