August 25 has been a popular date for scheduling royal weddings in recent years. Sunday marks the anniversary of three spectacular bridal moments in Europe: royal weddings in Norway, Greece, and Germany.
The first Norwegian royal wedding of the 21st century took place in Oslo on August 25, 2001. Crown Prince Haakon, the son and heir of King Harald V of Norway, married his girlfriend, Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby, in a sparkling ceremony at Oslo Cathedral. The couple’s royal engagement had been controversial in some circles, because Mette-Marit already had a young son from a previous relationship, and she had admitted to using drugs in the past. But Haakon stood firm on his choice, and ultimately, after Mette-Marit made public statements disavowing past behavior, the wedding went on as planned.
On her wedding day, Mette-Marit wore a gown that embodied minimalist, sleek Scandinavian design. The ivory silk crepe dress was made by Ove Harder Finseth and Anna Bratland with significant input from Mette-Marit herself. The dress was reportedly inspired by some of the gowns worn by the groom’s fashionable great-grandmother, Queen Maud.
The new crown princess secured her silk tulle wedding veil with a sleek new diamond tiara. The petite bandeau of diamond daisies was a wedding present from her new parents-in-law, King Harald and Queen Sonja. The jewel is an antique piece, reportedly dating to around 1910. Mette-Marit kept the rest of her jewelry extremely minimal, wearing just a pair of tiny diamond stud earrings and a necklace with a small diamond pendant stone.
On the night before Haakon and Mette-Marit’s royal wedding, the bride actually wore a second tiara–but in a secondary necklace setting. The piece, known as the Vifte Tiara, was one of the wedding gifts offered to Queen Maud in 1896. For her pre-wedding dinner, Mette-Marit paired the necklace setting of the tiara with more Norwegian royal heirloom jewels: Crown Princess Martha’s Silver Wedding Earrings.
Almost a decade later, Crown Prince Haakon was one of the guests as a cousin, Prince Nikolaos of Greece and Denmark, celebrated his own royal wedding in Greece. Nikolaos, who is the second son of the last King of the Hellenes, announced his engagement to his longtime partner, Tatiana Blatnik, in 2009. The couple married in a Greek Orthodox ceremony on the island of Spetses on August 25, 2010. (They announced their amicable separation in April 2024.)
For their royal wedding ceremony at the Church of St. Nicholas, Tatiana wore a white lace wedding gown made by the Venezuelan fashion designer Angel Sanchez.
With her gown and veil, she wore diamonds and pearls, including a tiara borrowed from her mother-in-law, Queen Anne-Marie. The diadem comes from Anne-Marie’s own Scandinavian royal ancestors. Originally a corsage ornament, the piece was inherited by Anne-Marie’s mother, Queen Ingrid of Denmark, from her paternal grandmother, Queen Victoria of Sweden. Ingrid had the ornament transformed into a tiara as an eighteenth-birthday gift for Anne-Marie in 1964. It’s since been worn as a bridal tiara by all three of Anne-Marie’s daughters-in-law.
Exactly one year later, a cousin of the Greek royals was also married. Prince Georg Friedrich, the present head of the House of Hohenzollern, is a descendent of the Kings of Prussia and Emperors of Germany. He married Princess Sophie of Isenburg, a member of another former German princely family, in a civil ceremony in Potsdam on August 25, 2011. Two days later, the wedding celebrations continued with a glittering ceremony at the Church of Peace on the grounds of Sanssouci Palace. The religious ceremony coincided with the 950th anniversary of the founding of the House of Hohenzollern.
For the ceremony, Princess Sophie chose a wedding gown that was a truly avant-garde piece of art. The dress, a modern pleated gown by the German designer Wolfgang Joop, was worn with a sheer jacket for the ceremony itself. Adding even more contrast was the antique lace veil that was layered over the entire ensemble.
With the veil, Sophie wore an antique diamond tiara from her family’s personal jewelry collection. The floral jewel has been worn by several Isenburg family brides, including Sophie’s sister, Princess Katharina, who is married to Archduke Martin of Austria-Este (a brother of Prince Lorenz of Belgium). Sophie’s only other significant jewelry for the wedding ceremony was a pair of large diamond stud earrings.
But for the wedding reception, Sophie removed the lace veil, the sheer jacket, and the floral tiara, and added another special piece of heirloom jewelry: the Prussian Meander Kokoshnik, a magnificent German royal tiara made by Koch. (You can see the reception ensemble here.) Above, Sophie wears the same tiara last year during the wedding celebrations for Prince Ludwig and Princess Sophie-Alexandra of Bavaria in Munich.
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