Hello friends. It’s been a while. I hope you have all been well this summer and have had a chance to take some time off to just be free and care for your own time and activities. That’s what I’ve been doing and why I haven’t blogged here for such a long time.
Before the summer I was hired by Sveriges Radio (Swedish Radio, national public service broadcaster) as their royal expert during the countdown to Crown Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling’s (now Prince Daniel, wow!) wedding. They gave me a couple of weeks of fun and hectic work where I blogged for them, met people who worked on their wedding project coverage in different ways, sat at in-house meetings at the offices, and I also appeared on radio several times.
Adding to that, I was also one of the commentators during the live wedding broadcast on national radio. Yes, it was definitely exciting! But because of my commitment to them, this blog was left a little bit neglected, to say the least, and by the time the wedding was over and things were going back to normal I just took a spontaneous break from everything.
But going back to that very special June I have to say that it was such a fun time. After years of waiting and a wedding hausse going on for a year and a half it was really climax when the big day came on 19 June. Stockholm offered beautiful weather, all the re-building projects on the streets had been finished in time and there were beautiful decorations everywhere. I also got a chance to meet some fellow royal watchers that I’ve only known online before and together we really had great time.
The day before the wedding, on 18 June, my friend and well-known royal expert Roger Lundgren, who worked for SVT (Swedish Television, national public service broadcaster) during the wedding events, with a little help from me had arranged a lunch for royalists and monarchists that had come to Sweden for the wedding. People from near and far gathered, some even came from across big oceans while others were Swedes who came to the capital for the big day. Archduchess Walburga Habsburg Douglas spoke and after that we enjoyed lunch together.
The day after the wedding, Sunday 20 June, I met up with my royal friends outside Grand Hôtel where we did some real royal watching. Unfortunately I only had my standard kit lens to the camera with me and the longer zoom one at home so the photos I got with me are lousy. Despite lots of waiting time, security cut-offs and police who weren’t very understanding though they only did their jobs, it was interesting. Together we saw royals from Jordan, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, Japan and Belgium.
After the royal spotting on Sunday, we went to the Stockholm Cathedral to see the wedding decorations. They were simple but beautiful and nothing lavish. It was very saddening to see though how some people didn’t respect the decorations and simply ripped off their own “samples” to save.
So that was that. What we had waited for for so long was over before we knew it. It felt a little strange when the city started removing the decorations, the streets opened for normal traffic and the big portraits of the bridal couple were taken down; only two days or so after the wedding day there were not many signs of it left. Only the souvenirs in the tourist shops gave an idea of what had taken place.
Now it’s almost the end of August, the last days of summer, and at least here where I live there’s not much of summer left. I wish you all a happy and healthy fall and hope to see you here on the blog also in the future. I will do my best to continue it and update as often as possible. Tomorrow the official wedding book is released and you can expect an update on that!
Sofia.
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