January Royal Brides

Princess Astrid of Norway was a January royal bride

(photo kongehuset.no)

Royal brides don't heart January. Like December before it, it's got plenty of potential royal wedding issues attached to it. The weather's not the best for all those carriages rides/ balcony appearances that come with a set of royal nuptials, your long list of regal guests are probably finishing their seasonal holidays so the reception will look patchy at best and no one has got any spare cash to buy souvenirs after the Christmas splurge. The list of regal marriages for January is small and rather low key as a result but here are three royal brides who said 'I do' in the first month of the year.

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Bride: Princess Caroline of Monaco married Prince Ernst Augst of Hanover Date: January 23rd 1999 Location: Prince's Palace, Monaco Rites: civil marriage Royal romance: This wedding was meant to be low key but the cat came out of the royal bag as Ernst needed the Queen's permission to wed (thanks to his descent from George II) and a Declaration in Council on January 11th 1999 let the world know about the impending marriage. This was a rather controversial royal romance as Caroline, who had been widowed in 1990 on the death of her second husband, Stefano Casiraghi, was friends with Ernst's first wife, Chantal. Caroline and Ernst went on to have a daughter, Alexandra, in the summer of 1999 (hence the 'flared' jacket on Caroline's Chanel suit in the wedding pictures). 

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Bride: Princess Margriet of the Netherlands married Pieter van Vollenhoven

Date: January 10th 1967

Location: St. James' Church, The Hague

Rites: Dutch Reformed Church

Royal Romance: university sweethearts Margriet and Pieter had to wait a while to say 'I do' as the bride's sisters lived their own wedding stories. Margriet's sister, Irene, caused a constitutional crisis in 1964 by marrying the Catholic Carlos Hugo of Parma meaning royal marriages were far from popular when Pieter proposed in March 1965. Then eldest sister and heir to the throne, Beatrix, announced her own engagement and that royal wedding, with its implications for the very future of the Dutch monarchy, took precedence meaning Margriet had to wait almost two years to become a royal bride. It didn't matter. The couple wed on January 12th 1967 and have been together ever since.

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Bride: Princess Astrid of Norway  married Johan Martin Ferner

Date: January 12th 1961

Venue: Asker Church, Oslo

Rites: Lutheran

Royal Romance: this was a bit of a groundbreaker of a royal relationship. Just twenty five years after her not so distant cousin, Edward VIII, had given up the throne to marry a divorced commoner, Astrid of Norway wed a man with no title and a previous marriage and her country celebrated. Despite some objections from parts of the religious establishment, the second daughter of King Olav, married the man she loved and went on to be Norway's first lady for another eight years until her brother, Harald, married, Astrid and Johan were happily married until his death in January 2015.