Royal Brides Part II—Diana’s Tiara and Victoria’s Secret

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         Last week I posted about Queen Victoria’s revolutionary wedding dress, which broke with tradition in 1840 by being white and featuring, not a diamond crown, but simply a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair. I also included two photos and comments about the crowns worn by modern royal brides Princess Diana and Kate Middleton.  I posted a photo of Diana and wrote:  “Princes Diana, at her wedding on July 29, 1981, wore a much more visible and dramatic crown—the Lover’s Knot tiara, which was made in 1914 using diamonds and pearls from the royal family’s collection.”

            Turns out I was wrong.  As my sharp-eyed daughter Eleni pointed out, that was not a photo of Diana in the Lovers Knot tiara at her wedding, although it did become her favorite crown and the Queen did loan it to her for the wedding.  But at the last minute Diana decided to get married in the Spencer Family crown, shown here.

         According to People Magazine, “Like all good royal pieces, the Spencer Tiara is actually made up of other pieces of jewelry... The current version – which is constructed with diamonds shaped into tulips and stars surrounded by attractive scrolls – was probably finalized sometime in the ’30s. It has become a popular wedding tiara for the Spencer family: Diana’s sisters – Lady Sarah and Jane, Baroness Fellowes – both wore the sparkler for their wedding days and Victoria Lockwood, who was the first wife of Diana’s brother Charles, the current Earl of Spencer, wore it when she married into the famed aristocratic family in 1989 (when little Prince Harry served as a pageboy). However, Diana’s mother, Frances, did not wear the tiara when she married into the Spencer family in 1954.”

        Back to Victoria and her famous wedding dress, which featured a flounce of Honiton lace.  As a mark of support for the Honiton industry, Victoria insisted her daughters also order Honiton lace for their wedding dresses. She also wore her wedding lace sewed on to the dresses she wore to the christenings of her nine children and to the weddings of two of her children, her eldest daughter, Victoria, in 1858, and her youngest son, Leopold in 1882.

         Victoria’s youngest and favorite daughter, Princess Beatrice, was the only bride allowed to wear Victoria’s own veil of Honiton lace, because her mother knew how much she loved it.  Beatrice wore it as part of her wedding gown when she married Prince Henry of Battenberg in 1885. Her veil was crowned with a circlet of diamond stars, a marriage gift from her mother.  Here is Beatrice at her wedding.

         (I found out, while researching this post, that Beatrice was originally expected to marry Napoleon Eugene, the French Prince Imperial, whose murder during the Anglo-Zulu war in June of 1879 I have already written about in an earlier post called “The Prince Imperial—Murdered by Zulus” http://arollingcrone.blogspot.com/2012/06/prince-imperial-murdered-by-zulus.html?showComment=1396480676400#c7285588968167878773

         The telegram announcing the Prince Imperial’s death left Queen Victoria and Princess Beatrice in tears.  According to Victoria's journal, "Dear Beatrice, crying very much as I did too, gave me the telegram ... It was dawning and little sleep did I get ... Beatrice is so distressed; everyone quite stunned."

         Later, when Beatrice fell in love with Prince Henry of Battenberg, she told her mother she had decided to marry him and the Queen stopped speaking to her for seven months, communicating only by written notes.  Victoria had always said that her youngest and favorite daughter should never marry, but stay by the Queen’s side as her companion.   Eventually Victoria was cajoled into accepting the engagement and consented to the marriage on the condition that Henry give up his German commitments and live permanently with Beatrice and the Queen.

 Twelve years earlier was the marriage of Victoria’s son and heir, Edward, Prince of Wales, to Princess Alexandra of Denmark in Saint George’s Chapel of Windsor Castle in March of 1863.  This wedding produced a deluge of photographs of the future King and Queen.  Because the court was still in mourning for Prince Albert, ladies attending the wedding were restricted to wearing gray, lilac or mauve. The notoriously libertine eldest son of Victoria did not do a very good job of hiding his affairs—more than 50 by some estimates—which occurred both before and after the wedding.   In fact Victoria blamed Edward’s loose ways for the death of her adored husband.

 In September 1861, Edward was sent to Germany, supposedly to watch military maneuvers but actually in order to introduce him to Princess Alexandra of Denmark.   Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had already decided that they should marry. They met on 24 September thanks to his elder sister, Victoria, who had married the Crown Prince of Prussia in 1858.   Edward and Alexandra were friendly from the start; and marriage plans got underway.

From this time, Edward started earning his reputation as a playboy. He attended maneuvers in Ireland, and spent three nights with an actress Nellie Clifden, who hid with him in the camp.  Prince Albert, though ill, heard about his son’s adventure and went to visit Edward at Cambridge, to read him the riot act.  Just two weeks after the visit, Albert died, in December 1861.  Queen Victoria was inconsolable.  She wore mourning clothes for the rest of her life and she blamed Edward for his father's death.  She considered her son frivolous, indiscreet and irresponsible and wrote to her eldest daughter, "I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder."   

 (Edward’s many mistresses included actress Lillie Langtry; Winston Churchill’s mother Jennie Jerome, who became Lady Randolph Churchill; actress Sarah Bernhardt, and Alice Keppel, who was the great grandmother of Camilla Parker Bowles—formerly mistress of Prince Charles and now his wife.)

Finally, here is Victoria’s secret, which I discovered while researching this post.  Today we like to think of Queen Victoria as being extremely prudish, but in fact, her marriage to Prince Albert was very passionate, and in 1843, she commissioned her favorite artist Franz Xaver Winterhalter, to painting an intimate portrait of herself, “for Albert’s eyes only”.  The resulting painting, which Victoria wrote was “My darling Albert’s favourite picture” was kept in Albert’s private writing room, where only he could enjoy it.  After the death of the Queen, Buckingham Palace kept Victoria’s “secret picture” a secret, revealing it to the public for the first time in 1977.  

You may wonder why this painting was considered so intimate and erotic that no one was allowed to see it.  This is one more example of my oft-repeated statement that what we in the 21^st century see when we look at an antique photograph or painting is far different from what contemporaries of the image saw.

The erotic element in Victoria’s secret painting is the hair (as well as the expanse of royal bosom shown.)  In Victorian days, a girl became a woman at 18 and began to wear her hair up, piled on top of her head, often in braids as Victoria did.  No one but her husband would be allowed to see her with her hair down and disheveled, draped over her shoulders. 

A woman’s long hair was one of the most erotic parts of her body in those days; witness the advertisements for hair products showing naked women with their floor-length hair protecting their modesty å la Lady Godiva. ( If you want to know more about  the history of “Older Women and Long Hair in the Olden Days”, check out my December 2010 blog post on the subject: http://arollingcrone.blogspot.com/2010/12/older-women-and-long-hairin-olden-days.html  .  

By the way, the heart shaped pendant on a gold chain held a lock of Albert’s hair which Victoria wore “night and day” before their wedding. (Many times I’ve acquired a daguerreotype from the 1840’s and removed the image from the case or pendant ,to find a lock of the sitter’s hair inside.)

      

The Perfect Wedding Dress in Ninety Minutes!

(No, this isn’t the gown Eleni chose. I can’t reveal that one until after the wedding. This is from my collection of vintage wedding photographs-- Grace Weaver Powers who was married to William Denton Bloodgood in New York City on 4/22/1903.)

When daughter Eleni surprised us on June 4 with the news that she was planning to be married to Emilio in Corfu, Greece on 10/10/10—only four months away—she added that she’d made an appointment for us to go shopping on Monday, June 7, at one of the only two places in New York where a bridal gown could be bought off the rack rather than made to order, which takes months. The gowns in this place are all samples, she said, most of them worn once by models and donated by the store or by the designers themselves. Best of all, the gowns are sold for a fraction of what they’d cost at retail and all the proceeds go to charity.

I was about to participate in that hallowed ritual of mother and daughter—the search for the one perfect gown that would showcase her beauty on the most important day of her life. It was a liminal moment—a term Eleni taught me while majoring in folklore and mythology at college—because it marked her stepping across a threshold from one stage of life to another. I felt privileged to be included in the momentous search. (And I mentally swore to keep my opinions to myself and let her find the dress that she’d always dreamed of.)

We drove from Grafton MA to Manhattan and showed up at 12:00 noon at The Bridal Garden on the ninth floor of a grim industrial- looking building on 21st Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue.

Once inside, we were greeted by two salesladies, Winona and Vivienne, in a vast suite lined with gowns, each in a clear plastic zipper bag and sorted by: strapless gowns or gowns with straps and/or sleeves, and gowns with full skirts or straight skirts. They explained to us that they were a non-profit organization and that the profits from selling these donated dresses goes to a charter school in Bedford Stuyvesant.

Eleni, who is only 5 feet tall, already knew that she didn’t want a strapless gown nor a full skirt filled with crinolines. There were two other brides already shopping with their mothers, and each pulled out all the dresses that appealed to them, which Winona and Vivienne carried into their dressing rooms, separated by curtains. (No shoes or moms allowed inside—and a prominent sign warned “no photographs.”)

Once she tried on a gown, the future bride would emerge to view herself in the wall of mirrors while the salesladies provided a small stool to stand on in order to see how the skirt would fall and turned the mirrors so she could see the back.

Next to us was a tall, slender, dark-haired young woman with her mother who originally came from Croatia. The Mom carefully unwrapped two rectangular pieces of lace that had been handmade by the girl’s grandmother. They were hoping to incorporate the lace somehow onto the gown she chose.

That bride gravitated toward gowns that were modern, slim and drape-y, often involving panels of chiffon that drifted about the body, reminding me of something that Isadora Duncan might dance in.

Eleni, on the other hand, who came in thinking she wanted something simple and unembellished, found herself selecting gowns that involved lace, like a bride in one of my vintage photographs. Soon she had narrowed down the 12 original selections to three gowns, but in the end, we all agreed that one gown, an absolute vision in exquisite point d’esprit lace, was the clear favorite.

I knew that when she appeared on her wedding day everyone who saw her would gasp in admiration. Even the salesladies exclaimed at the sight, saying the dress was unique—it had arrived from Barcelona, Spain only a week ago, donated by the designer, Rosa Clara, and it was immaculate, having never been worn. (Dresses that have been soiled are cleaned by the Bridal Garden’s special dry cleaner for $250 – a bargain price.)

I asked Winona about her job; it would be so interesting to watch brides and their mothers choosing a gown. Each mother/daughter team must be a mini-drama as the dynamics of their relationship play out. It’s an emotional experience watching a daughter emerge from the dressing room for the first time dressed as a bride. No longer a child who needs her mother to advise and instruct her—she’s ready to walk down the aisle on her own in a dress of her own choosing.

Do the brides and their mothers often cry? I asked Winona, who had mentioned that she had a background in psychology and education. “Usually when we put the veil on it happens,” she nodded.

She added that most brides, when they find the dress that they love, get a particular expression of delight, a “bride face” when they see themselves reflected in the mirror. At this moment Eleni definitely was wearing her bride face.

Eleni twisted her blonde hair into an up-do and Winona brought out a simple veil and placed it on her head. Like all the other MOB’s, I felt my eyes fill with tears. Because Eleni had decided that she was going to buy it then and there, I got permission to take photos, while Vivienne checked the length and the fit. She told Eleni to bring it back to have it shortened and fitted, once she had the perfect shoes.

When we left carrying the dress, expertly packed and rolled, both Winona and Vivienne hugged and kissed Eleni. We rode the elevator down to the street in high elation. The whole transaction had taken less than an hour and a half, and now we were headed off to a favorite restaurant nearby, Le Singe Vert, to have lunch and raise a glass of wine to the bridal gown which had come all the way from Barcelona just in time to find its destiny as the One Perfect Dress for Eleni.

Suddenly I’m an M.O.B!

Last weekend (starting June 4) was one of those periods when everything seems to come together as if charmed—one fortunate coincidence after another-- and afterwards you realize that a phase of your life has ended and another has begun.

Daughter Eleni and her boyfriend, Emilio, were scheduled to come from New York City to our home in Massachusetts for the weekend to attend the Grecian Festival at our church in Worcester and for Emilio to meet our extended family and see our home for the first time (although my husband and I had met him on several occasions in New York.)

They were taking the Acela train on Friday to Providence where we would pick them up at 8 p.m. I discovered that the date, June 4, coincided with “Waterfire,” when the river in Providence is lighted with fires along with music and entertainment—so we booked a table at a restaurant overlooking the scene.

The train arrived on time (another rare occurrence) and we were seated in the Waterplace Restaurant just as the sun set. With us were the “Big Eleni” and her daughter Frosso. (Big Eleni came to live with us in 1974, a week before daughter Eleni was born, and she became a second mother to our children and the reason all of them speak fluent Greek. She was married in our Massachusetts house in 1976 and her daughter Frosso is like a younger sibling to our three.)

Daughter Eleni and Emilio produced wrapped gifts for all of us. Mine turned out to be the book “Mother of the Bride” by Ilene Beckerman. Nick’s was a DVD of the 1951 movie “Father of the Bride” starring Elizabeth Taylor as the bride and Spencer Tracy as the FOB. I was starting to get the message.

At that point, tears and hugs of joy erupted and Waterfire was forgotten. Emilio and Eleni had decided to get married sooner rather than later, on October 10, 2010 (“ten-ten-ten” as Eleni repeated throughout the weekend, like a mantra.)

Long before she met Emilio, Eleni had decided that she would be married on ten-ten-ten in the church of Panagia Mandrakina on the Ionian island of Corfu. That idea took root in April of 2008 when she traveled to Ohio for the engagement party of her friend Neela, whose Hindu wedding in Jodhpur, India, we attended in January of last year.

At that engagement party in Strongsville, Ohio, the family accountant/astrologer-- Joshi Uncle-- told Eleni that she would get married in Sept. or Oct. 2010 and that she must wear an emerald to help make this happen. That same weekend I had been trying unsuccessfully to sell my emerald ring in Manhattan, but emerald prices were down, so I gave it to Eleni.

Months before she met Emilio last July, Eleni’s aunt, Thitsa Kanta, who is an expert at reading one’s fate in the coffee grounds left over when drinking Greek coffee, started seeing a letter “E” in Eleni’s cup every time she did a reading. (She turns the cup over in its saucer when it’s down to the dregs, makes the sign of the cross over it, and when she turns the cup back over, the dried sludge has made designs that Kanta can read with uncanny accuracy, although she does like to throw in advice along with the predictions.)

Eleni was introduced to Emilio (who is from Nicaragua) by Neela and her husband Dave in March of last year in the Village Lantern bar in Manhattan where they had all gathered to watch a Duke football game. After they began dating, when Kanta would find an “E” in Eleni’s cup, she would say that it stands for “Evtychia” – happiness. Eleni would suggest that maybe it stood for “Emilio”, but Kanta would answer, “No, Emilio starts with an A”.

On May 24, Eleni and Emilio decided to marry—fulfilling the prophecies of the Hindu astrologer and Thitsa Kanta. But before telling anyone, Eleni called Arete, a cousin who lives in Corfu, to make sure that the church in Corfu beneath the Crusader fortress that looms over the harbor would be available on her special date. It was. Arete even wrangled the Greek priest who would conduct the ceremony and a Catholic priest who would assist.

By the time they told us the news, the couple already knew their wedding colors (blue and white—the colors of the Greek flag and—another magical coincidence—the colors of the Nicaraguan flag as well! )

By Saturday, phone calls announcing the joyful news had traveled round the world. On Saturday morning, Eleni sat in our kitchen and created a web site – www.eleniandemilio.com -- with information about the couple, how they met, where and when they would wed. When Emilio’s mother in Nicaragua saw the photos on the web site, she shed tears of joy. Back in Grafton we got pretty choked up too. What every parent wants for their child is a mate who will love them and help them cope with the inevitable bumps in the road ahead. Emilio seemed to be the ideal partner for Eleni, sent by the fates all the way from Nicaragua to encounter her in Manhattan.

On Saturday, Greek relatives began to appear to meet the groom. Despite the their aches and pains, two of the four Thitsas (Aunts) came over to sit under the grape arbor by the pool. Nick asked the Big Eleni to bring coffee, but she said no, on this day we must serve only sweet things—she had whipped up plenty of deep-fried loukoumades—like donut holes drenched in honey. Coffee, she said, was bitter and could not be served on such a happy day.

Later we all went to the Grecian Festival where I learned I had sold three paintings in the art exhibit and Emilio –by accident or by divine design—met a third aunt, lots of cousins and nephews and nieces and their offspring and even our Priest Father Dean, who just happened to have with him his brother-in- law who turned out (another coincidence) to be a customer and close friend of Emilio.

On Sunday, we all went to church and Emilio weathered more introductions with great tact and aplomb. At lunch, Nick produced a bottle of Lafitte Rothschild 1966 that he had set aside 36 years ago.

That evening Nick and I drove the newly engaged couple back to Manhattan. Eleni handed me several Bride’s magazines so I could learn my responsibilities as Mother of the Bride. The articles about schedules and favors and invitations and receptions and appropriate dresses sent me into a total panic. Everything needed be done six months to a year in advance and we only had four months!

But Eleni had already made a start on the momentous search for the Bridal Gown. We had an appointment the next day, Monday, she told me, at one of the two places in Manhattan where gowns could be bought off the rack in sample sizes instead of made to order, which took months.

That night, as the four of us dined at an Italian restaurant near Eleni’s apartment, Nick gave the newly engaged couple advice on the secrets of a good marriage and they listened patiently. (“Keep surprising each other every day. Never take your relationship for granted” seemed to be the major message.)

While he pontificated, I pondered how the stars and the gods and the recent full moon had come together to create a magical moment, full of love and joy; a time of new responsibilities and many tasks, but also a time for letting go, preparing to watch my daughter walk down the aisle and into a new life. In one weekend I had been given a new role in life—after three decades of being just a Mom, I had been transformed into a MOB.

Next: How to find the perfect bridal gown in an hour and a half.