HRH The Prince of Wales and Mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles
April 9, 2005

We’ve reached the finish line, kids: it’s our last hattery flashback post for the month!  Which also means that Crown Princess Victoria’s wedding is only three days away — hooray!!!

Our most recent crown princely wedding in Europe was also easily the most controversial: in 2005, Prince Charles married his longtime partner, Camilla Parker Bowles, with whom he had admitted committing adultery during his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales.  Both parties were divorced (though Charles, in the wake of Diana’s death, was considered a widower), and so a religious wedding in the Church of England was impossible. 

However, it had become clear by 2005 that Camilla’s place in Charles’s life was non-negotiable, and so the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury decided that marriage was the best option.  The solution?  A civil wedding ceremony at the Guildhall in Windsor, followed by a Church of England blessing at St. George’s Chapel on the grounds of Windsor Castle.  There was one more unforeseen obstacle to overcome, however: the wedding had to be postponed by one day when Pope John Paul II died, and Charles had to represent the Queen at his funeral.

But on the day of the wedding itself, things went off largely without a hitch.  Camilla went from being Mrs. Parker Bowles to being HRH The Duchess of Cornwall (she doesn’t use the Princess of Wales title because of lingering associations with Diana).  All of Charles and Camilla’s children were present for the celebration, as were all of the senior royals — and Camilla’s ex-husband, too!  The two celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary this year.

(For those hoping this wedding hattery flashback might be about Charles and Diana’s wedding, never fear: I’m planning to do a flashback post about that event in the future!)

Wedding Hatters

Great Britain
Elizabeth · Camilla · Beatrice · Eugenie · Sophie · Anne · Zara
Serena · Sarah · Birgitte · Katharine · Alexandra · Marie-Christine

Foreign Royals
Anne-Marie · Mette-Marit · Laurentien

Okay, Birgitte, this is how you should wear your favorite color — beige — if you must embrace your Danish roots and stick to neutrals.  The brim of the hat is perfect, it’s got enough stuff on it to make it fun, and your hair looks totally fab underneath it.  Get rid of that powder puff thing, and we’d have an A+ here!

Thanks to lovely reader James for sending in this photo!

Yep, it’s just as I feared over in the Princess Anne post — here’s Birgitte in all her minty glory!  This one’s a repeat from Ascot ’08 — and I still think the hat and the coat aren’t quite the same color.

I was going to snark on Birgitte Gloucester for wearing the upside-down flower pot hat again today, but then I remembered that her son and his wife, the Earl and Countess of Ulster, just had a new baby girl (who has been dubbed “The Lady Cosima Windsor” — the name’s just weird enough, but cute, too, non?), plus her two daughters are both due to give birth at literally any moment, so she probably does have a few things on her plate.

But Prince Richard, if you could just sneak into your wife’s hat closet at some point and ditch this one, we’d owe you a big one!

(Also, check out Lady Helen Taylor’s husband Tim restraining their daughter Estella during what was apparently an epic fit on the balcony.  Now there’s a story that’s going to get trotted out for all her major milestones: “Hey, remember when you pitched a screamer on Cousin Lilibet’s balcony during her birthday parade?!?”  I love the nonchalant look on Tim’s face — that’s the face of a man with four children, that is!)

It’s the second day of the South African state visit, and that means the traditional Guildhall banquet … and that means a Tiara Alert!

Birgitte here is wearing one of the tiaras she sports most frequently: the Russian Palmette Tiara.  Both times we’ve seen her wearing it during our Mad Hattery coverage, though, she’s used the pink kunzite center stone — and today, she’s demonstrating how you can switch out that center piece.

I quite like the emerald here, maybe more than I like the kunzite stone.  I like the extra diamond setting around the emerald.  What about the rest of you?

Unfortunately, this is the best picture I’ve found so far of Princess Anne and Birgitte Gloucester at the state banquet this evening.  When will these photographers ever learn that Mad Hattery requires more close-ups of the rest of the royals, not just HM and Camilla?  Hmph.

Anyway, from what I can tell here (which obviously isn’t much), Anne seems to be wearing a tiara with a lower profile — maybe the Meander Tiara that once belonged to her grandmother, Princess Andrew of Greece?  And I’d bet that Birgitte is wearing either the Russian Palmette Tiara or Princess Marie Louise’s Cartier Indian Tiara.  Anyone else have thoughts?

Happy New Year, Mad Hatters!  While I’m sure you’re all quite busy enjoying the bubbly and kissing your sweethearts at midnight, I thought a little hattery fun might be in order tonight as well.

(Well, this is Mad Hattery — I’m sure you’re all actually lounging on cruise ships in your Sunday best, wearing construction helmets and sipping champers just like Queen Silvia up there.  You are, aren’t you?  I knew it!)

Anyway: everyone’s doing year-in-review posts right now (heck, I just did two: The Top Ten British Royal Events of the Decade and 2009′s Royal Romance Review — check ‘em out!), so I thought we’d join right in.

And so, without further adieu, I present: the Mad Hattery Awards of 2009, recognizing the wackiest, zaniest, and most completely out-of-control hattery worn this year!

And the winners are (drumroll please)…

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s only appropriate that Birgitte Gloucester attended today’s Armistice Day service in honor of the passing of the World War I generation, because she often represents The Queen at military events and memorials.

But I’m not sure I would have chosen head-to-toe forest green crushed velvet for the occasion.  Or, really, any occasion.

Unfortunately, this was the best picture I could find of Birgitte Gloucester’s hat at this year’s Remembrance Sunday observance at the Cenotaph.  (I guess people haven’t gotten my memo yet about taking more photos of the more obscure members of the royal fam.)

From what I can see, I’d wager this is the same hat that she wore to three separate military memorial services this summer and autumn.  If it is the same, I think I like it better with her hair down here rather than with a scrunchie and a ponytail.

One more Tiara Alert before the Prez of India heads home: this time it’s the Duchess of Gloucester at the traditional Guildhall Banquet.  This is a great view of Birgitte’s Russian Palmette Tiara, which she also wore at the Guildhall Banquet last March for the Mexican state visit.  She’s got the kunzite center stone in again as well.

Quite the sparkly little ornament, isn’t it?  Not my favorite British tiara, but it’s definitely eye-catching!