Prince Pieter-Christiaan and Princess Anita of Orange-Nassau are celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary this week. In honour of this milestone, we’re going to take a look back this week at the many hats worn at their civil and religious weddings.
Prince Pieter-Christiaan, third son of Princess Margriet of the Netherlands and her husband, Professor Pieter van Vollenhoven, met Anita van Eijk when they were both working in London, sometime between 2000 and 2003. Their civil wedding, on August 25, 2005, took place at Het Loo Palace in Apeldoorn (the Prince was raised on a nearby estate) attended by family and friends. Following the trend set by other von Vollenhoven daughter-in-laws, Anita wore a brightly coloured Andrew Gn suit for the civil ceremony.
Printed with coral and trimmed with chunky beads at the collar and cuffs, the green and yellow ensemble was topped with a large headpiece in the same shades. Made up of splayed straw leaves around a central mass of yellow ranunculus blooms, I remain perplexed about how Anita’s garden headpiece related to the deep-sea theme of her suit.
The groom’s mother, Princess Margriet, topped her black and white suit with a coordinating pompom fascinator. Princess Marilène, wife of Prince Maurits, wore an avant garde hat with a stacked gold straw crown and transparent cream brim, attached most unusually at the top of the crown. With her gold bubble skirt, the ensemble had a decidedly futuristic, outer space vibe about it.
Princess Annette and Aimée Söhngen (Prince Floris’ fiancée who would join the Dutch royal family just two months later) both wore black and white ensembles topped with coordinating cartwheel brimmed hats. Aimée’s hat, with its black straw crown and white lattice brim, added a particularly lovely top note to her elegant ensemble.
At the time of this wedding, I wondered if the black/white/gold ensembles worn by Princess Margriet and her daughters-in-law were deliberately chosen to let the bride stand out. If this was indeed the case, it did not apply to Queen Beatrix (as was her title then), who topped her cornflower blue dress with a tall crowned hat in silver straw.
The loudest style statement at these civil nuptials was made by Princess Laurentien, who wore a vibrant turquoise and lime trouser suit. The oufit’s pairing with a coordinating turquoise gigantic, flat crowned picture hat by Fabienne Delvigne simply defies description.
While some of these Dutch royal hats make rather bold statements, I think overall, they have aged surprisingly well in ten years of changing fashion (much better than the outfits they were paired with!) and with some new frocks, could be successfully repeated today. I’m curious which pieces stand out to you most, dear readers, and for what reasons.
Photos from ANP and Getty as indicated
to 45 years ago today, when Princess Margriet of the Netherlands wore a straw hat with upfolded halo brim to open the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto.
Royal Hats 
