Wedding bells are in the air! At least, they were on 10 June 1967 when Crown Princess Margrethe of Denmark married Frenchman, Count Henri de Laborde de Monpezat, at Holmens Kirke in Copenhagen, Denmark.
So when and how did the royal couple first meet? For that we need to wind back the clock two years to 1965. At this time Margrethe was studying at the London School of Economics and Henri was with the French embassy. One day Margrethe was invited to a dinner at the French embassy. At the dinner she was seated next to Henri. Margrethe was ambivalent about the Frenchman. Henri, however, found Margrethe interesting, but was a bit intimidated by her. So at their first meeting the fireworks seemed to be absent.
Then perhaps a little serendipity came into play. A short time after their first meeting, they met yet again at a wedding. They got to chatting, which went better this time. After the wedding they were both bound for London. Whether prearranged or again a touch of serendipity, they sat together on the plane. Deciding to keep their relationship on the down-low, the couple dated for a little over a year before announcing their engagement. They had kept their relationship so quiet, in fact, that it came as a pleasant shock to most Danes. Later on Margrethe's father, King Frederik apparently said to her, “He came, he saw, and you conquered.”.
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On 10 June 1967, the same day as the royal wedding, Greenland issued a stamp commemorating the event. The stamp was designed by Gunnar Bilmann Petersen and it was engraved by Czeslaw Slania. This is not the most exciting stamp in the world, but the cameo profiles of the newly-weds is definitely an interesting slant. It is worth noting that this wasn't the last time Slania engraved Margrethe for a stamp. He produced some quite beautiful definitives for Denmark, bearing her portrait. But we'll leave those for another time. For now, here's the royal wedding stamp...
Until next time...
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