It is impossible to attend each royal wedding there is, but this would have been a really nice one for me, if it hadn’t been a nine-hour train ride to Amorbach, which is situated near the city of Aschaffenburg, Germany. It is not really the time of the year anymore to combine such a trip with a short vacation. Luckily I have friends who live a bit closer.
On Saturday 16 September 2017 Hereditary Prince Ferdinand zu Leiningen and Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia married religiously at the Princely Abbey Church of Amorbach at 11am. The civil wedding had already taken place on 29 April 2017, as I reported back then. A rather special marriage as it was the first marriage between two descendants of Queen Victoria of Great Britain since 1981, when the groom’s parents Fürst Andreas zu Leiningen and Princess Alexandra von Hannover got married.
Bride and groom are rather closely related. They are second cousins once removed. Ferdinand is the eldest of the three children of Andreas Fürst zu Leiningen and his wife Alexandra née Princess von Hannover. He was born in Frankfurt am Main on 8 August 1982. His mother is a descendant of the Kings of Hannover, and her grandmother Viktoria Luise was a daughter of Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany. Ferdinands paternal great-grandmother on the other hand, was Grand Duchess Maria of Russia whose mother was Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria through her son Prince Alfred.
Viktoria Luise was born in Berlin on 2 May 1982 as daughter of the late Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia and his second wife née Ehrengard von Reden. Her great-great-grandfather, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, was a son of Emperor Friedrich III and his wife Princess Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain. Her paternal grandmother on the other hand, was Grand Duchess Kira of Russia whose mother was Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria through her son Prince Alfred.
With such great royal connections you won’t be surprised that there were quite a lot of royal and noble guests. But more about that later. Although the previous days had been rather rainy, the wedding day luckily was a great sunny day. The bride – whose taste of clothes I usually don’t really admire – wore a gorgeous white lace wedding dress as well as the Prussian Meander tiara. Upon arrival she was accompanied by her elder brother, Prince Friedrich Wilhelm.
After the service – that lasted for about one hour and 15 minutes – bride and groom appeared at the balustrade of the abbey church and kissed. At the bottom of the stairs a picture with family and witnesses was taken, before the bride and groom left by carriage. The reception and party were private. The previous evening already a Polterabend had taken place.
