Twenty years ago today, the Prince of Asturias married Spanish journalist Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano in a glittering ceremony in Madrid. To celebrate the anniversary of the now King and Queen of Spain, I’ve got a look back at some of the jewelry highlights from the wedding day.
On May 22, 2004, the Prince of Asturias married Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano in a grand ceremony at Madrid’s Cathedral of Santa Maria la Real de la Almudena. Felipe, 36, was the son and heir of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain. He’s a rare example of a monarch whose parents were both royals, as Sofia is the daughter of King Paul and Queen Friederike of Greece. Felipe had been officially proclaimed Prince of Asturias, the title traditionally held by the Spanish heir, in 1977, after the post-Franco restoration of the monarchy put his father on the throne. He was educated with his future role in mind, studying law and foreign service and serving in Spain’s army, navy, and air force. He’s also multilingual, fluent in several languages including Spanish, French, and English, and he competed with the Spanish sailing team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
In November 2003, Felipe surprised Spaniards when he announced that he was engaged to marry Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano, a 31-year-old television news anchor. Letizia, who was born in Oviedo, had earned degrees in journalism in Madrid before embarking on a career that took her to Mexico and the United States. She was reporting on the sinking of an oil tanker off the coast of Galicia in December 2002 when she met Prince Felipe, who was visiting the site of the disaster. The two conducted a private courtship for the next year before announcing their engagement on November 6, 2003. During a press conference, Letizia showed off the unique diamond engagement ring that Felipe had given her.
Felipe and Letizia were the first Spanish royal couple to be married in Madrid since the infamous royal wedding of his great-grandparents, King Alfonso XIII and Queen Ena, in 1906. While that royal event ended in tragedy, Felipe and Letizia’s wedding day went much more smoothly. Letizia wore an elegant, structured wedding gown made by the Spanish couturier Manuel Pertegaz. The incredible silk gown featured embroidery done with real gold thread, including meaningful motifs like ears of wheat (symbols of abundance and fertility) and lilies (a reference to the House of Bourbon’s traditional fleur-de-lis symbol). The dress also had a dramatic 15-foot train.
Letizia carried an antique nineteenth-century fan from the Spanish royal collection and wore a cathedral-length lace veil gifted to her by Felipe. To secure the silk tulle veil, she borrowed a diamond jewel, the Prussian Tiara, from her new mother-in-law, Queen Sofia. The special diadem was an heirloom that had been passed down to Sofia from her mother and her maternal grandmother.
The tiara is a small diamond and platinum kokoshnik. It originally belonged to Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia, the only daughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and was made for her by the German court jeweler, Koch. In the spring of 1911, 18-year-old Viktoria Luise was photographed in the tiara by the British photographer Keturah Anne Collings. She was visiting Britain with her parents for the unveiling of the memorial to her late great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, in front of Buckingham Palace.
A year later, Viktoria Luise met and fell in love with Prince Ernst August, the son and heir of the Duke of Cumberland, formerly the Crown Prince of Hanover. Their marriage in 1913 ended a rift between the Hanoverians and the Hohenzollerns that had persisted since Prussia’s annexation of Hanover in 1866. Ernst August and Viktoria Luise’s royal wedding was the last great pre-war gathering of European royals.
Viktoria Luise and Ernst August had five children. Their only daughter, Princess Friederike, was born in 1917 as World War I raged throughout the continent. By the time she was ready to travel abroad for her education, things had calmed slightly in Europe. Friederike headed to Italy, where she became close to a pair of her cousins, Princesses Helen and Irene of Greece. The relationship would lead to a romance with their brother, Paul, who would eventually succeed to the Greek throne as King Paul of the Hellenes.
Paul proposed to Friederike in 1936 during the Summer Olympics in Berlin. They were married a year and a half later, in January 1938, in Athens. Viktoria Luise loaned the Prussian Tiara to Friederike to wear in her engagement photographs, and eventually she gifted the tiara to her daughter outright.
The Prussian Tiara sparkled on a third generation of the family when Paul and Friederike’s elder daughter, Sofia, began wearing it as a teenager. She chose the diadem as her bridal tiara when she married Infante Juan Carlos of Spain in Athens in 1962. The two eventually became King and Queen of Spain, and Sofia brought the tiara with her to Madrid, where it remains today. Both of Juan Carlos and Sofia’s daughters, Elena and Cristina, have worn the tiara, and it became a favorite jewel of their daughter-in-law, Letizia. She wore it on her wedding day and continued to wear it as her primary tiara for years afterward. I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll see it sparkling next on Felipe and Letizia’s elder daughter, the current Princess of Asturias.
On her wedding day, Letizia paired the Prussian Tiara with a new pair of sparkling diamond earrings. These were a gift from King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. The stud portion of the earring resembles a fleur-de-lis, an appropriate design symbol for the bride of a prince of the House of Borbón. The earrings have remained favorite pieces in Letizia’s jewelry collection for the past two decades.
Felipe and Letizia’s wedding was attended by an enormous number of royal guests from around the world. It had been a whirlwind of celebrations for the European royals in recent weeks, after the weddings of Prince Friso and Princess Mabel in the Netherlands and of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary in Denmark. Regardless, the guests put on their best day ensembles and jewels for the wedding in Madrid.
You can see the glittering gala jewels from the pre-wedding dinner the night before in two of my earlier articles (part one here and part two here). Below, I’ve included some of my favorite royal jewelry highlights from the wedding itself.
The mother of the groom, Queen Sofia of Spain, was elegant in a demi-parure of emerald and diamond jewels for the wedding. The set includes a necklace, a pair of earrings, and a bracelet. The suite has been borrowed by Queen Letizia in recent years.
Felipe’s eldest sister, Infanta Elena, wore pearls with an elegant ensemble and a dramatic lace mantilla for the ceremony. I believe this particular strand of pearls is the pearl necklace from the joyas de pasar. Elena also wore a diamond and pearl bracelet from the collection of her grandmother, the Countess of Barcelona, on her left wrist.
Infanta Cristina wore a gold and gray ensemble, including a textural floral coat, for the wedding. She accessorized with diamond bracelets and a pair of diamond floral earrings.
Felipe’s aunt, Infanta Pilar, wore stunning pearls for the wedding ceremony: classic pearl and diamond button earrings, a single-stranded pearl necklace, and a multi-row pearl bracelet with a gemstone clasp.
Another of the groom’s aunts, Infanta Margarita, sparkled in a suite of jewelry set with diamonds and sapphires.
Royals from across Europe and around the globe also attended the wedding. Queen Fabiola of Belgium, who came from a Spanish aristocratic family, glittered in a diamond necklace with a large aquamarine pendant from her collection.
Queen Margrethe II of Denmark opted for diamonds and pearls for the wedding. She used the Connaught Pearl Bar Brooch as an enhancer on a long pearl necklace. The brooch gestures toward the Spanish and Danish royal families’ shared British royal heritage. It originally belonged to Princess Louise Margaret, Duchess of Connaught, who was a sister-in-law of Queen Ena of Spain. Margrethe also wore modern diamond and pearl earrings made by the Danish jeweler Jan Stockmarr.
Many of the royal guests at the wedding wore pearls. Queen Silvia of Sweden’s pearly ensemble included the Leuchtenberg Pearl and Ruby Brooch, a gift from King Oscar I of Sweden to his wife, Joséphine of Leuchtenberg. The brooch’s five pearls represent Oscar and Joséphine’s five children.
Princess Maxima of the Netherlands was elegant in diamond and pearl jewelry for the wedding ceremony as well. As a coat clasp, she used the Dutch royal family’s gray pearl fleur-de-lis brooch, a nice little nod to the Spanish royal family.
Princess Caroline of Monaco was in attendance at the wedding with her (now estranged) husband, Ernst August of Hanover. The Hanoverians and the Spanish royals are close cousins via Felipe’s grandmother, Queen Friederike of the Hellenes. For the ceremony, Caroline wore a suite of diamond floral jewels and her impressive aquamarine and diamond brooch.
Also suitably bejeweled was the Begum Aga Khan, the title then held by Gabriele Thyssen, who had also previously been married to Karl of Leiningen. Gabriele wore pearls with a suite of diamond and ruby flower jewels. The set comes from Van Cleef & Arpels, and it uses the firm’s famous “mystery setting” technique. Gabriele sold the ruby suite at auction in 2016.
Just as she had done for the Danish royal pre-wedding gala the week before, Marina of Savoy brought out pieces from the family’s pink tourmaline parure for the Spanish royal wedding. She wore the necklace, earrings, and bracelet from the suite for the ceremony.
The Savoys were perhaps a bit sheepish as they arrived for this royal wedding. The night before, Marina’s husband, Vittorio Emanuele, infamously punched his cousin and fellow pretender to the Italian throne, Amedeo of Savoy-Aosta, at the pre-wedding gala. Queen Anne-Marie of Greece caught Amedeo as he stumbled back on the steps of the Royal Palace of El Pardo, and King Juan Carlos is said to have thundered “¡Nunca más!” in response to the entire sordid episode. Amedeo was helped inside, where a member of a Middle Eastern royal family is said to have tracked down an ice pack for him. The injured prince told one newspaper that the attack was “an unpleasant business that does not deserve further comment.”
Thankfully, the drama at Felipe and Letizia’s wedding seems to have ended there. The rest of the day appears to have gone off without any major hiccups, and the couple’s marriage has endured for the last 20 years. Scandals have embroiled several other members of Felipe’s family in the two decades since, but he and Letizia have largely emerged unscathed. They have a pair of daughters, Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofia, and they’ve been on the throne as King and Queen of Spain since 2014. To celebrate the milestone wedding anniversary, the Spanish royal court recently released several new pictures of Felipe and Letizia with their daughters, emphasizing the closeness of their family.
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