bringing you the very best in ridiculous royal hats
Get out your champers and your party poppers, hatters -- it's time to celebrate a heck of a hattery year!
Chin chin! It's that time again, everyone -- our countdown of the Maddest Hatters of 2011! I'm going to kick start the fun, but I want to hear your nominations in the comments, too. Let's get this party started, shall we?
And the winners are...
Happy birthday to a princess making her hattery debut on her twentieth birthday, and with a Tiara Alert, too! This is Princess Mako, the daughter of Prince Fumihito and Princess Kiko of Japan (the Prince and Princess Akishino). She's the eldest grandchild of the emperor and empress, and she's a college student studying in Tokyo.
Turning 20 is something of a marker of adulthood in the imperial family; Mako gave a press conference in which she talked about the devastating earthquake that struck her country earlier this year as well as her own plans for the future, including royal duties. She also appeared in full court dress for the first time, debuting this diamond tiara. Looks a lot like the Cambridge Lover's Knot Tiara, doesn't it?
PHOTO CREDITS: AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi
Happy birthday to the maddest of the Norwegian royal hatters, Princess Märtha Louise! Here she's pictured attending the wedding of Prince Joachim and Princess Marie of Denmark a few years ago, wearing her standby sparkler, the King Olav's Gift Tiara. But, oh, the hats!
The Crown Princess of Sweden's Wedding (2010)
The Prince of Asturias's Wedding (2004)
The Prince of Orange's Wedding (2002)
The Duke of Brabant's Wedding (1999)
Hope you have a truly angelic day, your highness! 
PHOTO CREDITS: Life
Welcome to a new feature on the blog -- Hatty Birthdays, celebrating some of our favorite hatters on their big day. Let me know what you think!
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Happy birthday to the big kahuna of Belgian hatters, Queen Paola! Here she is wearing a rather sensible chapeau during this year's National Day celebrations, but she's definitely had a few seriously mad hattery moments of her own!
Prince Albert's Wedding (2011)
Belgian National Day (2010)
Church of Our Lady of Laeken (2010)
The Prince of Orange's Wedding (2002)
Hope you have a wonderful day, Your Maj! 
PHOTO CREDITS: REUTERS/Jan Van De Vel
We've got a lot on our plates for the next week, hatters! I'll be covering Daisy and Henrik's visit to Washington, D.C. (happening this week), as well as the big schedule of events for the weekend/next week:
• Saturday: Trooping the Colour! First outing for the Duchess of Cambridge, the whole Windsor family on the balcony, etc.
• Sunday: Service of Thanksgiving for Prince Philip's 90th birthday (today! -- hence the celebratory hats donned above. Thanks to lovely reader Shannon for sending the photo) at Windsor. The British royal family should be there en masse, and it's rumored that foreign royals will be attending the service as well. Jackpot!
• Monday: Garter Day. We may see some of the lingering foreign royals show up here as well -- and maybe William and Kate, too? Probably Camilla, Sophie, and Birgitte Gloucester, as per usual.
• Tuesday - Saturday: Royal Ascot. HAT CHRISTMAS. Need I say more?
So, bottom line is this -- I'm having panic attacks over the fact that the site is probably going to buckle and crash again, as we've been having increasing traffic loads even after the recent upgrade. I'm still looking into more permanent solutions to this problem, but know this: it's likely that I'll be updating posts this weekend and next week over at the Annex. If you haven't yet, mark your books!
(Also, if you haven't seen it yet, here's a treat: a new sister site for Mad Hattery! The TiaraPedia has its own digs now! Wallow in the blingy goodness.)
PHOTO CREDITS: PA/MSN
American hatters: want to win a copy of the BBC's DVD of William and Kate's royal wedding and relive all of the glorious hattery of the day?
Head over to Royalty with Ella Kay to enter the giveaway!
Whew! About 36 hours after you slightly over-zealous hatters crashed the site under a massive traffic load, it's back up and running! Hooray!
Hats from the Cambridge wedding have already been given the Mad Hattery treatment over at the back-up site, Mad Hattery Annex, but they will be moved over here sometime this weekend. If you want to comment over there in the meantime, feel free; I'll leave those posts and link them to the ones I put here.
Finally, an announcement: because restoring the site involved upgrading its server, I'm going to run a little Mad Hattery pledge drive to hopefully help ease the cost of the upgrade. If you're a reader here, whether you comment regularly or just lurk here, please consider donating a dollar to help keep the blog going! If this site crash has taught me anything, it's that all of you love this place as much as I do, and I hope, with your help, that we can avoid any more brief catastrophes!
If you'd like to make a small donation to support the site, please click on the Paypal button below or in the sidebar. Thanks, everybody!
ETA: You hatters are unbelievably generous -- you've already donated enough to cover the cost of the upgrade! Thank you all so much! Mad Hattery will definitely live to see another day.
Pull up a chair, get cozy, put on your best tiara, and get ready to watch the royal wedding with us! I know that the site has been slow for the past few days -- slightly heavier-than-normal traffic for some reason -- so you may have to be a little patient with it at times. If there are major problems (though fingers crossed there won't be), I'll be on Twitter as well.
Can you all believe that the day is finally here? Get ready for some serious hattery, everyone! (And which one of you wants to claim the lovely pair of antenna up there, hm? I know that's a mad hatter out in the wild!)
Only a few more hours now, hatters! The royal wedding starts at 11:00 AM in London (that's 6 AM in New York / 3 AM in Los Angeles for Yanks like me!). Our Royal Wedding Live Post (squee!) will kick off here at:
7 AM London / 3 AM New York / 12 AM Los Angeles / 5 PM Sydney
... if I can wait that long to open it, ha! Until then, if you're partying all night, head over to place your bets on the tiara, or browse through our wedding flashback posts!
To help us all keep track of the many, many royal faces who will be appearing at this wedding, I've put together a pictoral guest list for this wedding just like I did for Crown Princess Victoria's wedding last June. Print out out and keep it by your side so that you can correctly identify all of the royals (and their hats!) as they appear on screen -- because you know the commentators aren't going to know who half these people are, LOL!
THE BRIDE AND GROOM
HRH Prince William of Wales and Miss Catherine Middleton
Click below for the rest of the guests!
All right, hatters: it's time for...
Place your wagers -- which tiara will Kate sport on her big day? There are four classic British examples in the graphic above, plus the entire British section of sparklers in the Tiara-Pedia to choose from -- and even more tiaras on top of that! Register your guess in the comments, along with your answer to this bonus question:
What color will the Queen's hat be on Friday?
Have at it, hatters!
