As you can see from my face,
I am in total bliss…To be there at the tour.. And at last meeting Darren and Suzanne.... I have been corresponding with Suzanne for over a year nowAbout Pink Ribbons CrusadeAnd to finally put a face with a heart, Was really fantastic..Look closely and you’ll see the purple ribbon I wear for Diana’s fountain..
I am standing in front of the wedding display case…On top of it, there is a doll with Diana’s honeymoon dress on it and behind, a signed sketch and actual swatch of the material used for the dress. Suzanne tells the story of the material for the dress. Diana fell in love with the material, but the designer had already sold it to another lady. When the designer mentioned her name, Diana said.."Oh I know her, she is comming to the wedding." Diana called her and asked would she allow her to buy the material for her going away dress..Of course she said yes! An invitation to her wedding is laying across the top and this plate,
is arranged on the display top. Next to the display case, is the Diana bride doll by Crees and Coe, creators of the Pink Ribbons crusade limited edition doll.
This doll is just so lovely…it is perfect in the details of Diana’s wedding dress and has a 5 foot train, according to Suzanne. It is one of a kind, as it was a first edition, and is signed by the designers and donated to Pink Ribbons Crusade.
To my right just past the bridal doll is the first of the dresses..The periwinkle blue one..I will include it’s history and description with the other dresses…but for the moment..It is the first thing that registers with me..I had seen so many pictures of her in it..The waist is so tiny...Sigh....
In this section of Diana’s room..It begins with the headlines, and pictures of the engagement announcements
“Prince Charles to wed Shy Di”
If you click on the pink ribbon, you can see a small selection of some of the collectibles..too many for me to name..but just to get an idea of how it is presented..
It then moves into the wedding..Suzanne has had recreated Diana and Charles’s wedding cake. Not as beautiful as you would think..but the plans were made by the engineering department of the palace, so I guess it just didn’t translate into beauty! Charles and Diana's wedding cake was five feet high, 200 lbs. and included 80 lbs. of marzipan, 40 lbs. of icing sugar and three bottles of rum. In its own little glass case, is an actual piece of the wedding cake..moldy you would think, but according to Suzanne, English wedding cakes are made much like our fruitcakes, made to last long, and with three bottles of rum in it..This cake I am sure, is well preserved.You can actually still see the currents and dates in it...
Suzanne has also had created, a full size reproduction of Diana’s wedding bouquet…just stunning..every detail has been meticulously tended to.. It is like you are there seeing it all first hand...
As you can see from the photos I borrowed from the Austin tour, every kind of plate, cup and collectible you can think of is in this display. It includes a signed Christmas card from Diana and reproductions of some of her famous hats, as well as signed prints of the dresses donated by the designers to Pink Ribbons Crusade.There are just too many things to name..Literally hundreds upon hundreds of things to see.....
More of collection
Every doll collection is represented..Franklin Mint, Ashton Drake, American Doll Company..Crees and Coe..if they had a Princess Diana Doll.. Suzanne’s collection contains it. There are many I had never seen before…One of Suzanne’s favorites is a rather inexpensive one given to her by her granddaughter and sits proudly on the display case alongside the rare Crees and Coe bridal one..
The next section is her boys..Prince William and Prince Harry. This is just one of the many collectibles..A plate from Harrys birth that has William holding baby..There are many pictures of Diana and her sons.. A section for each of them...She always thought they were the most important parts of her life...And the best part of both she and Prince Charles...I thought of Mothers Day, Soon comming in the Uk and here...And how they must miss their dearly loved Mother..
The next section is her works..collectible plates are everywhere…if there is a collectible plate..again..Suzanne has it included with this collection.
There are actual pictures of Diana and Mother Theresa..and one doll I especially loved, was Diana as she was dressed in her landmines outfit of blue shirt and chino pants..I kept going back to this one, thinking, ”That was when she was her loveliest and when she was most alive..”Pictures of Diana in a landmines field,with children, her charitable works...Make this a most touching and powerful section...
Now I am going to talk about meeting Darren McGrady, Diana’s personal chef.
Handsome, personable, you can imagine Diana liking this man. He was just through conducting one of the teas,where he was guest speaker, and was in the exhibit signing autographs. Suzanne introduced him to me... And we talked for quite awhile..Darren told me, when Charles and Diana decided to divorce, she called BP and asked that he become her personal chef, where he remained until her death. He started his career in Buckingham Palace, peeling carrots for the Queens horses..I am glad he moved up a notch or two..and became someone that Diana could eat some of her lonely dinners with at night. Accoding to Andrew Morton in "Diana, Her New Life,"she thought of her staff as family,
From the book: "She thinks nothing of eating a light supper with her new chef,Darren McGrady in the Kennsington Palace kitchens and occssionally invites her butler,Paul Burrell, the son of a Derbyshire lorry driver, and his wife Maria, to join her for dinner."
Darren told me,
"In spite of what you might have heard, when they were first married, they were in love. They would giggle and laugh and just acted like newly weds...""It didn’t last very long, but at first it was like that. They did seem to love each other..."
Diana, according to Darren, was very health conscious, as we know,loved fresh squeezed orange juice and often drank fresh aqueezed vegetable juices. Once she had heard about fresh aqueezed beet root juice and insisted on drinking that alone. Darren asked her to let him combine it with something else, but she insisted, no she wanted it plain, so he made it for her. Later that evening she comes out,laughing, and has bright red splotches all over her face, and said
”Look what you did to me!”
She very seldom drank liquor, except a little wine now and then. Champagne made her too bubbly and giggly, so she stayed well and away from it. She was already like that,
“With the laugh that bent you double...” As her brother said at her funeral...Was it only yesterday?
He said the thing he remembers most was her wonderful wicked sense of humor.
He had a letter and a card she had written to him, and he read them to me..The card had a picture of three ugly men in ballet tutus and just showed how funny and thoughtful she was. The card was thanking for something he had done for her..He asked me would I like to hold them..and of course I did..I can tell you, I was in tears, to touch something Diana once held in her hands... He said she always wrote on both sides of any paper..so it was hard to frame anything with a whole letter on one side,just the Diana..of Diana..So sweet and thoughtful..The events in their lives....That was Diana...So very kind...most of the time!
Darren said that on the night Prince Charles announced his infidelity on the Jonathon Dimbelby interview, Diana came into the kitchen with her famous divorce dress on ,looking like a dream walking..She said “I’m off now...I’ll show them!” Or something close to that…
And did she ever! She was so beautiful and sexy in that dress. Most people could have cared less about Charles and his mistress. When they saw Diana that night and she was on the front pages of every newspaper and on the screen of every television most women thought
”YOU GO GIRL!”
I know I did!
Suzanne interjected that her shoe designer always knew the state of her marriage by her shoe heel height..If things were going along well, flat shoes so she didn't tower over Prince Charles..If things weren't going so well, out came the heels and with her height, she made him look like a whimp beside her tall gracefulness..Yes, that was Diana..She was unique..God love her!
He also said, Diana had a bit of mischief in her..She would do something or plan to do something..and say,"This will drive the palace mad! I'm going to do it!"
I just totally loved her..warts and all..I am thinking as he is talking..
Suzanne King told him about my poem on the Date with Diana CD and my web site of poetry for Princess Diana. He asked for the web address to read some of it..which I gave him.. I told him, I regretted not ever telling her how much she meant to me..I wished so badly I had written to her as I wanted to so many times..He told me..
"She would probably have written you back..She was like that..so very kind.."
Of course at that I got all teary eyed..but it strengthened my vow To never put off saying "I care" for someone...We may only have today to say it..I always do that now...
My silent tribute to Diana
Photo
by Teri Garrison
The last section is on Diana's deathThe head lines scream:
"Princess Diana killed
In Paris Tunnel"
Newspaper headlines from all over the world
Are on the walls of this section...Photos from the funeral, And it containsMany memorial collectibles created since her death..Pictures of Althorp And her final resting place on the island Lead to the next little section...
On the last wall..A portrait of Diana in blackOn a small square tableThe Royal Standard is draped...And on top of itA beautiful reproduction Of the flowers that graced her coffin...White LilysA Welsh Guard's red uniformOn a dress formGuards the display...I was in tears by then..Suzanne and Pink Ribbons CrusadeHave woven with such detailThe fabric of Diana's life..I am touched beyond words...
Now for the dresses...
The Dresses
Click on Pink Ribbon
To EnterThe Dress Room
