A Wedding for All

Six kings, five queens and more than 100 princes and princesses came to Athens last week to celebrate the marriage of King Constantine to Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, and the royal flush virtually undid the ancient birthplace of democracy. Ordinary counts, barons and prime ministers languished unnoticed in hotel lobbies; telephones and traffic alike broke down; and the bridegroom daily confronted a protocol officer's nightmare. The King and Queen of Belgium, the King of Norway, and the Grand Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg, for example, arrived on the same aircraft, requiring Constantine to march out to the plane and back three separate times for the ritual of greetings and national anthems.

Champagne & Fireflies. But for all the raining royalty, Constantine, at 24 the world's youngest king, on a throne by no means esteemed by all his people, his nation gnawed by economic problems and the Cyprus crisis, worked hard to make it a wedding week for all Greece to enjoy. Some 6,000 Greeks from all walks of life, many flown in from the Greek islands in chartered planes, were invited to receptions in the Tatoi Palace. Nearly 40,000 Athenians joined the royal couple one night for folk dances and music in Olympic Stadium. The honored guests--both titled and untitled--were mostly European, but some came from far-away lands.

Thailand's King Bhumibol and his beautiful Queen Sirikit, Jordan's plucky King Hussein and Lynda Bird Johnson, all mingled merrily in the throng at the royal ball in the Athens palace gardens. Searchlights blazed a cross in the sky under a three-quarter moon, and tiaras winked thick as fireflies as 1,600 guests danced under the giant cypress trees, sipped champagne, and ate lobster and chicken off plain white plates with stainless steel cutlery.

Leaning from balconies and rooftops and jamming the streets, nearly a million Greeks cheered wildly on the morning of the wedding as the royal procession made its way to Athens' honey-colored Metropolis Cathedral in a storm of red and blue strips of paper, dominant colors in the flags of Greece and Denmark. To the slow roll of drums, first came Constantine, resplendent in his beribboned white field marshal's uniform, and Queen Mother Frederika, their black, red and gold coach drawn by six white horses.

Alighting at the church, the Queen gave a motherly jerk at the bridegroom's tunic to smooth a remaining wrinkle. Looking slightly dazzled as any 18-year-old bride might, Anne-Marie followed in a coach with her father, Denmark's King Frederik, nearly tripped on the 18-ft. train of her white duchesse satin gown as she stepped down from the carriage. She carried a bouquet of lilies of the valley, which later she sent to be laid at the grave of her husband's late father, King Paul.

Guns & Bells. While 1,200 guests watched the ceremony in scorching 90DEG heat in the cathedral, millions more watched it live on Eurovision and special closed-circuit TV in Athens (Greece has no regular television service). Before a velvet-covered table and flanked by the royal families of Greece and Denmark, the King and his princess exchanged rings, hers made from the meltings of coins minted in the time of Alexander the Great. Golden crowns were held symbolically over their heads as Archbishop Chrysostomos intoned the 32-minute Greek Orthodox ritual (AnneMarie, a Lutheran, will join the Greek Orthodox Church later).

To Constantine, the archbishop, his white beard bobbing, said: "Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thy house, thy children like the olive branches around thy table." The couple then drank three times from an enameled cup of wine, circled the altar in the traditional Dance of Isaiah as rose petals cascaded from the ceiling. As they marched down the aisle, a 101-gun salute began reverberating across the blue hills of Hellas, and all the bells of Athens began to peal.

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