EUROPE’S latest working royal couple married in the Netherlands yesterday and revealed that they would be moving abroad to escape media interest in their lives.
Prince Constantijn, the youngest son of Queen Beatrix, and Laurentien Brinkhorst, daughter of the Dutch agriculture minister, may, however, care to seek advice on the wisdom of their choice of destination tomorrow from two guests, the Earl and Countess of Wessex. They plan to seek their privacy in London.
Prince Constantijn, 31, is the third of three brothers. His bride is taking a job in a public affairs consultancy.
Yesterday about 50 family members and close friends attended the civil wedding ceremony in a former town hall in The Hague. Couples in the Netherlands must have civil ceremonies before they can have a religious service under strict laws separating the state from the church. The Prince and Princess will say “Ik Wil” for a second time at a church ceremony tomorrow.
The build up to the marriage has been partially overshadowed by the controversial engagement of Prince Willem-Alexander, the 33-year-old heir to the throne, to Maxima Zorreguieta, whose father served in Argentina’s bloody military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983.
Yesterday’s bride, dressed in a stylish pink silk outfit with an eye-catching hat, smiled shyly as Prince Constantijn kissed her hand during the 45-minute ceremony, officiated by Mayor Wim Deetman and broadcast live on Dutch television.
The bookish prince, known mainly for his desire to maintain a low profile and avoid the publicity surrounding his brothers, wore a smart blue suit. Queen Beatrix, 63, emerged from the ceremony smiling and laughing.
For once it was an occasion free of the controversy that has dogged royal weddings in The Netherlands from the time that Queen Beatrix’s mother, Juliana, married a German prince amid the rising tide of Nazism in the late 1930s.
Among the 1,100 guests expected at tomorrow’s wedding, to be held in the medieval protestant church of St Jacob’s in The Hague, will be the Wessexes, Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko of Japan, Belgium’s Prince Philippe and Sweden’s Princess Victoria. A cortege of at least five carriages is expected to accompany the royal couple as they make their way through the cobbled streets.
Princess Laurentien, as she will henceforth be known, studied at Groningen University in the Netherlands, Queen Mary’s College, London, and finally the University of California where she completed a master’s degree in journalism and wrote a dissertation on American street prostitution.
After working briefly for CNN in the United States, she moved to Brussels in 1992, where she established herself in the city’s growing lobbying industry. She will take a job in the London office of BSMG Worldwide, the public affairs consultancy which she joined in February last year, when the couple return from their honeymoon.
Prince Constantijn, who is not on the Dutch civil list, will take up work with the strategic consultants Booz Allen & Hamilton. The couple, who have not yet found a place to live, have said publicly that they want three children.