Seven Brooches From Isabella II's Estate Became a Tiara in 1906, and Every Bride in the Line Has Worn It Since: the Wedding Near Seville of Juan Carlos's Goddaughter

In 1904 Spain's Queen María Cristina bought seven flower-shaped brooches from the estate of her mother-in-law, Queen Isabella II. The jeweller Ansorena built them a silver frame so they could be worn as a diadem, with a matching set of bracelets, a necklace, a brooch and earrings. In 1906 the queen gave the set to her daughter, Infanta María Teresa, for her marriage to Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria. The tiara has not left the family since and became a bridal piece: every bride in the line wears it once in her life. On Saturday, 19 September, it was Cristina Escudero Márquez's turn.

The wedding took place in the chapel of Hacienda San Juan del Hornillo, an estate on the outskirts of Seville, and the groom is José San Martín. The bride is the daughter of Pedro Escudero and Mirta Márquez de Baviera, granddaughter of Tessa of Bavaria and a second cousin of King Juan Carlos, whose goddaughter Cristina is. So it is not a royal wedding, but it is the wedding of a king's goddaughter, and on the bride's head sits a piece of jewellery four generations have kept for precisely this day. Her cousins Sol and Victoria Matossian wore the same tiara before her, and before them her mother and her aunt. Six flowers of diamonds and emeralds, explains David Rato, an expert on royal jewellery, and the original belonged to Isabella II, the 19th-century queen of Spain.

The dress was classic and romantic: a fitted bodice, a boat neckline, short puffed sleeves, and a skirt of structured, asymmetrical layers of fabric giving volume and movement. The bouquet: wildflowers in white and pink with greenery. Nothing that competes with the tiara, and that was evidently the point.

The journalist Teresa de la Cierva, close to both families and a guest at the wedding, wrote that it was "a celebration full of love and emotion, but also great fun". The choir was provided by the Escolanía of Los Palacios, children aged four to seventeen selected from local schools. One of the most emotional moments came when a guest sang a Portuguese song while the bride danced. Dinner was outdoors, at long tables with candles and a great deal of flowers, with live music until the end.

A reader in the Balkans will recognise something familiar here. Not the emeralds, but the logic: jewellery that is not sold but handed down, and a wedding where what you wear says where you come from. Here it is a grandmother's gold or the embroidered shirt that comes out once. There, seven brooches from 1904. The principle is the same; only the bank is bigger.