William and Kate Royal Wedding: Bad for the UK economy?

Much of the world was, of course, mesmerized by William and Kate's Royal Wedding.

You can add the Bank of England to that list, as pointed out this morning by Business Insider.

The U.K.'s central bank cited the April 29 ceremony twice in its latest "Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting Held on 4 and 5 May 2011."

The Royal Wedding news — which it mentioned ahead of the Japanese tsunami disaster — is, sadly, not particularly good for the U.K. economy.

Here's how the BOE put it:

"Business confidence surveys pointed to a pickup in underlying growth in the near term. But growth was likely to continue to be temporarily affected by special factors. In particular, the royal wedding and supply chain disruptions following the earthquake in Japan were likely to dampen GDP growth in the second quarter and boost it in the third."

Here's a .pdf link to the full minutes.

Royal nuptials aside, there was some other nasty news today for Britain's economy.

Initial jobless claims in the U.K. rose by 12,400 in the latest period.

That's the worst showing in 16 months, mate.