HRH The Prince of Asturias and Miss Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano
May 22, 2004

Only a week after Crown Prince Frederik married Mary Donaldson in Denmark, Prince Felipe of Spain tied the knot with journalist Letizia Ortiz in Madrid.  Theirs was the first wedding of a member of the Spanish royal family to take place in Madrid since the wedding of King Alfonso XIII and Princess Ena of Battenberg in 1906.  That wedding was marred by an assassination attempt on the royal couple and the tragic deaths of several bystanders -- this one, thankfully, went more smoothly, although it was a cloudy, rainy day in the Spanish capital.

There were a few controversies, however, about Felipe's choice of bride.  Letizia, a journalist who covered the September 11th attacks in New York and the Iraq War, will be the first commoner to be queen of Spain.  She also had previously been briefly married and divorced.  However, because her first wedding was a civil rather than religious one, the Catholic Church did not recognize it, and she was free to marry Felipe.

Felipe and Letizia have become quite a working team since their wedding, frequently appearing together on royal engagements.  They have also had two daughters, Infanta Leonor (born in 2005) and Infanta Sofia (born in 2007).  Leonor is expected to become queen of Spain in her own right one day -- that is, if her parents don't provide her with a baby brother!

Wedding Hatters

Here's one of the many brand-new (to us) royal faces who appeared at the Spanish royal wedding: the woman on the right is Sheikha Hala, who (at the time of the wedding) was the wife of the crown prince of Bahrain, Sheikh Salman -- he's the man in the glasses sitting beside her.

Not much has been released about why Salman divorced Hala after many years of marriage and four children, but I know one thing for sure: it wasn't because of a poor hattery performance here! 

Orange is a really hard color to pull off, especially in millinery, but the pairing of this orange hat with a yellow suit just looks so sunny and bright!  It's a lovely, flattering shape as well.  Too bad we won't be seeing more hattery from Hala in the future!