ROYAL WEDDING IN FRANCE

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28323, 8 July 1957, Page 2

ROYAL WEDDING IN FRANCE

2000 Guests At Ceremony (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) DREUX (France), July 5. In the most regal wedding the French Republic has ever seen, Prince Henri, heir to the French Pretender, married Duchess Maria Theresa, of Wurtemburg, today.

Lavishly-dressed aristocrats and thousands of French and German tourists swarmed into Dreux for the wedding. The prince, aged 24, and the blonde, blue-eyed duchess, aged 22, went through a civil ceremony in the Town Hall and then nuptial Mass in the tiny Saint Louis Chapel, where France’s last king, Louis Philippe, was buried a century ago. Duchess Maria Theresa wore a white satin dress designed for her by Jacques Heim. It weighed 551 b, had a 24ft train and was embroidered with silver thread. Her shoes, made from the same cloth, were a wedding gift, bought with pennies contributed by the children of Wurtemburg. Three thousand riot police stood along the route. Outside the tiny chapel, 150 stood guard all night to keep out gate crashers. Heading a royalty-studded list of more than 2000 guests were King Paul and Queen Frederika, of Greece, and the former occupants. pretenders and heirs to a dozen European thrones. After the civil ceremony, the bride sat in one hall of the building while guests waited for cars to take them to the chapel a mile away. Prince Henri’s father, the Comte de Paris, waited anxiously on the town hall steps.

Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, in a yellow dress, and her sister, Princess Irene, in a flowered blue gown, drew cheers from the crowd as they left. Queen Frederika of Greece wore a blue flowered dress and matching hat. She, too, was cheered. As the Comte de Paris and his family left the town hall r the spectators, many of them wearing the fleur de lys, emblem of the Orleans family, cried “Long Live the King.”