The Wedding of Mary of Denmark: 22 Years Later, Guests Are Still Ranked by Their Dress

Some weddings pass and are quickly forgotten. And some weddings become the photographic memory of an entire royal era. The wedding of Mary of Denmark to Crown Prince Frederik, on May 14, 2004 in Copenhagen, is in the second category. Twenty-two years later, the guests at that ceremony are still being ranked by „what they wore", not „who they were".

Spain's Queen Letizia - then still a princess - appeared in a red crêpe-de-Chine dress by Lorenzo Caprile. A bold choice: a stark colour that didn't allow itself to be ignored. Not pastel, not soft. A statement.

The Dutch crown princess Máxima, then visibly pregnant with her first child, appeared in a pink Valentino with a „star" tiara. Simple, soft, with one specific thing she already had then: a lyrical informality inside formal dress.

Caroline of Monaco, perhaps the most experienced guest at royal ceremonies across the entire 21st century, wore a dark lace gown with the Brunswick tiara - stones that have travelled across rovers and queens since the 19th century. She is perhaps at her best on the scenes where she isn't the bride, but the guest with history.

What makes Mary of Denmark's wedding special isn't only the dress code. It's the moment when half of Europe's royal elite was seen in one place, with precisely chosen jewellery and dresses still studied today in the „royal-fashion" Instagram circle. Twenty-two years on, not a single detail from that ceremony has been forgotten.

For a Balkan reader who watches the mutual posing with interest, there's one more nuance. The Balkan royal ceremonies we did have - the wedding of Alexander Karadjordjević in 1972 in London, or of Nikola in Cetinje - were more diaspora than European business. The queens who appeared there wore important tiaras, but without the audience Mary, Máxima and Caroline had. That's one of the unsummarised costs of our broken historical memory.

And Mary? In the meantime she has become Queen. Which, in the end, was the whole point of the wedding.