Her father, mathematician John Donaldson, had worn a kilt as he walked her down the aisle. Stitched into the lining of her Uffe Frank ivory satin wedding dress was her late mother’s own engagement ring. In the days following, when the echoes of Zadok the Priest had faded from her memory, Mary’s bouquet – the Danish traditional myrtle spring alongside a trail of Australian eucalyptus – would be laid on her mother’s gravestone in Scotland.
When King Frederik saw his soon-to-be-wife, all 31 metres of tulle cascading behind her, he teared up. His brother and best man, Prince Joachim of Denmark, stood by his side under the vaulted ceilings of Copenhagen Cathedral. Mary’s bridesmaids were her sisters, Jane Stephens and Patricia Bailey, and good friend Amber Petty. Prince Nikolai of Denmark, Frederik’s nephew, and Count Richard von Pfeil und Klein-Ellquth served as pageboys.
Guests looked on as the couple said their vows – Prince Edward and his wife Sophie, then Countess of Wessex; the King and Queen of Norway; Mary’s great-aunt Margaret. Also watching, in addition to the Danes celebrating their adopted princess, were a million Australians back home in Sydney. Waking up in the middle of the night to watch Mary marry a Prince, students from her old school put on Viking helmets and tiaras before having their own royal supper in the corridors of Taroona High.
By the time night fell on the newlyweds, they had been driven through the streets of Denmark in a century-old Barouche and sat down with 428 wedding guests for celebratory banquet of venison hunted from the royal forests. There was, as there so often is, one final wedding day tradition to be fulfilled. The couple had to start their first waltz before midnight. They were, as these tend to go, running behind schedule. As the opening bars of Niels W. Gade’s Wedding Waltz struck up, they made their way to the ballroom of Fredensborg Palace’s Dome Hall, and began to dance as the clock struck twelve. A fairytale ending for a fairytale marriage.