April 11, 2003
Although the concert started at 19:30 I had to be there one hour before. I entered the Palais des Beaux-Arts via the side-entrance. Inside I found already several journalists and photographers waiting. It was a bit of a mess, but finally a man in uniform directed our group of 13 journalists to our box in the concert hall. We found ourselves in a box on the side of the orchestra (see photo of the orchestra: the red arrow tells where I was seated) and we had a pretty good view on the public. People were dressed from nice to gala - our uniformed 'guard' said: "Those people in gala are the Italians" (meaning the Italian family members of Queen Paola). Some 1500 people were invited for the concert, including some 220 ordinary Belgians.
While waiting for the arrival of the royal guests we were trying to spot royals who were not on the guestlist among the public and we succeeded. The area just below the royal box contained Belgian politicians - although when we left we saw the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt coming out of a box not too far away from ours - and below them several royals were seated. We discovered the parents, brother and sisters of Princess Mathilde sitting next to the Aga Khan and Begum Inaara. In front of them were Don Luis Alfonso de Borbón y Martínez-Bordiú, the Duke and Duchess of Calabria who attend their first baby within a few months, the Duke's sisters Anne and Beatrice with Prince Egon von Fürstenberg, Marquess Matteo Fabra di Chiosi as well as Reza Pahlavi. In the row below them were the Duke and Duchess of Bragança, Prince Philipp Erasmus and Princess Isabelle of Liechtenstein, Prince Serge of Yugoslavia with girlfriend and Prince Michael of Yugoslavia. And on the row below them we saw Archduke Michael and Archduchess Christiana. More to the right of the hall we also spotted bridesmaid Clothilde de Meulenaere with her parents.
The royal guests as well as the family of the bride started arriving and were seated in the boxes on the left and the right of the royal box. Seen from our position on the left of the royal box we saw from the left to the right: Princess Sibilla and Prince Guillaume of Luxemburg, Prince Nikolaus and Princess Margaretha of Liechtenstein, Prince Constantijn and Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands, Princess Madeleine and Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Prince Philippe and Princess Mathilde of Belgium and Queen Fabiola of Belgium. On the right of the royal box from the left to the right we saw: Grand Duke Henri and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxemburg, Matthew Coombs, Joanna & Steve Grant with bridesmaid Emma Grant, Princess and Archduchess Maria-Laura and Prince and Archduke Amedeo, Prince and Archduke Lorenz with his brother Archduke Gerhard of Austria-Este, Pieter van Vollenhoven and Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, Prince and Archduke Joachim and bridesmaid Princess and Archduchess Luisa-Maria, Prince Jean of Luxemburg as well as Archduchess Marie-Astrid and Archduke Carl-Christian of Austria. Finally bride and groom arrived with their parents. Claire Coombs wore an ivory lady's suit designed by Edouard Vermeulen of the House of Natan. The Belgian national anthem, the Brabançonne was played and then the concert could begin. Most interesting was a piece of music with bird sounds in it that made the whole hall laugh.
The National Orchestra of Belgium was conducted by Mikko Franck. They played the following works:
* "Ouverture Joyeuse" by Marcel Poot
* "Cantus Arcticus" by Einojuhani Rautavaara
* Extracts from "Romeo and Juliet" by Sergej Prokofiev
* "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" by Paul Dukas
After the one-hour concert a reception took place in the Palais des Beaux-Arts. It took quite a while until all guests had arrived at the reception. Waiters walked around with drinks, for all champagne and Belgian beer, and sometimes little snacks - not really enough if you are starving from hunger because there was not much time to eat beforehand. While talking with someone from the Belgian tv-channel VTM I know from the Internet we saw that Princess Astrid's youngest children Joachim and Luisa-Maria went home with their nanny.
I finally ended up in the room where most royal guests were standing and talking. French definitely was the language most people talked in to each other, for example I heard Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands speaking beautifully French. Here I also discovered some guests I hadn't seen before like Prince Carlos de Bourbon de Parme, Prince Kardam and Princess Miríam of Bulgaria as well as Prince Wenzeslaus of Liechtenstein. I also saw royalty-journalist Stéphane Bern and hat-designer Fabienne Delvigne as well as designer Edouard Vermeulen of the House of Natan. It was pretty strange to stand between so many royals. Of course as I knew nobody I just stood on the side talking to noone. But anyway Don Luis Alfonso de Borbón y Martínez-Bordiú just passed me within centimetres when he left, and Prince Carlos de Bourbon de Parme even winked and laughed at me. After having been talking with a Belgian journalist for a while, I just dared to speak to Prince Wenzeslaus of Liechtenstein to ask if he knew the date of birth of his sister-in-law Astrid, who married his elder brother Alexander last February. He ended up asking his mother and they were both very friendly, so I got my answer. Shortly before 23:00 I walked back to the hall where I found the last few colleagues waiting for bride and groom to leave. When bride and groom left we also left the building to try to get some sleep as we all had to get up early for the wedding the next day.
Photos and copyright: Netty Leistra