22.7.2015 eerickson

The Year’s Most Fabulous Royal Wedding Is This Weekend

A royal wedding! Nothing is more exciting than that. Nothing is grander, nothing is a more valuable reminder of our own lowly stations in this world, than the union of one prince or princess and his or her well-suited, carefully chosen, family-approved bride or groom. Of late we’ve become accustomed to the British variety of royal wedding: stiff, pomp-and-circumstance-y state affairs that bring all the sallow-skinned, thin-lipped people of old England scurrying out of their crooked houses to clap their brittle, knobbly hands together as their betters roll by in gilded horse-drawn carriages. (The horse, of course, being a symbol of the British people.) A British royal wedding is a wonderful respite from the gray gloom and drear, the mud and pox, of daily English life.

But a royal wedding further south in Europe? Oh my, is that a more wondrous, sun-splashed thing. Luxe and lavish, not so ordered and buttoned-up as a royal wedding in the United Kingdom, but still refined and almost hideously elegant. And we’re being treated to one this coming weekend! Pierre Casiraghi,dashing (and occasionally bashing) son of Princess Caroline of Monaco, the eldest daughter of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, is set to wed Italian aristocrat Beatrice Borromeo in Italy on Saturday. So won’t that be a memorable do, the Monegasque prince taking a beautiful Italian bride, all of Monaco’s elite looking on, content in their own wealth, but maybe not content enough. Oh, would that we could be invited. A prince of Monaco’s wedding! Just imagine.

PHOTO designer bridesmaid dresses

But really, Pierre Casiraghi is not the intriguing half of the couple. That title belongs to Borromeo, who is the descendant of an Italian noble house (“ancient,” Wikipedia calls it), whose lineage includes a cardinal turned saint—an actual saint. The Borromeo family—of old, old Milanese wealth—has owned several islands in sprawling Lago Maggiore for centuries, since the 1500s. One of those islands, which includes a palace, is where Beatrice Borromeo will marry her prince this weekend. Borromeo is also, wonderfully, a dogged journalist in Italy. She studied at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and now does hard-hitting interviews on Italian television. Also, her dad is a count, so does that maybe make her a countess?

Countess Casiraghi. Now that’s a name! Countess Borromeo is pretty good too, if she wants to keep it. Either way, this is one fancy lady that Pierre has snagged. And together they will rule all the glamorous parts of Europe together, for several centuries. Because surely people like this, with the richest of old blood coursing through their veins, do not age and wither as quickly as we mortals. I’d have to imagine that Pierre and Beatrice, benevolent super-beings, will reign on long after all of our ashes have been scattered in the CiCi’s Pizza parking lots of our choosing. At least I hope so. Some things should be ancient, everlasting. A tradition like the House of Borromeo should live on forever, and what better way to ensure that than for its proudest daughter to live for hundreds and hundreds of years?

And just think of their children! I mean, these kids will really be something. Glorious, chestnut-haired gods on Earth, born wearing the finest of silks, learning to pilot wood-sided speedboats before they can walk. Their names will be Giancarlo and Abbondanza, Castafiore and Bertolucci. They will know no common ground, their feet only touching the crystal snows of Gstaad, the exotic sands of Naxos and Lampedusa. They will go to a Swiss boarding school so exclusive that even the students haven’t heard of it. They will see private jets and just think “jet.” They will see regular-sized bottles of champagne and ask why they’re so small. They will forever be sea-legged from standing on yachts. These are going to be some fine children, is what I’m saying. Real high-class, top-of-the-line kids.

And it all begins with a wedding, on an island in a lake. This Saturday. Oh what a life is about to begin.Tanti auguri, belli ragazzi! Why didn’t you invite me??