THE NETHERLANDS
All Amsterdam was agog as the banner with a heart and crown went up across Kalverstraat, the city's Fifth Avenue. And huisvrouwen goggled from their windows at open-topped limousines bearing 300 royal guests through town for a little prenuptial sightseeing at the Rijkmuseum and the city's famed diamond-cutting centers. Europe's wealthiest reigning family, the 400-year-old House of Orange, was about to marry apple-cheeked Crown Princess Beatrix, 28, to West German Diplomat Claus von Amsberg, 39.
Some of the preparations, of course, had a slightly nervous tinge about them. Ever since the engagement was announced last spring, a small but angry Dutch minority had denounced the match because Von Amsberg had served, at the age of 16, in Hitler's Wehrmacht. Half of Amsterdam's 45 city councilors refused to attend the wedding, as did the rabbis of three leading synagogues. But what really had the cops in a swivet was a bunch of high-spirited university students, who called themselves the Provos (meaning provokers). They came out emphatically against the monarchy, Germans, capitalism, Dutch society in general, and had a number of ingenious notions about how to louse up the official rites. They talked of spiking the city's water supply with LSD, hiring a frogman to emerge from a canal near the parade route and explode a bomb containing anti-Orange leaflets, even releasing a pack of white mice to stampede the horses drawing the princess' seven-ton golden wedding coach.
Ready Blood. On the big day itself, the practical Dutch were taking no chances. For the first time in its 66 years of service, the coach had a special brake, and the eight liveried footmen with it were really detectives in bulletproof vests. Some 8,000 policemen and soldiers lined the official route from the Palace on the Dam to the Town Hall, to the ancient Dutch Reformed Westerkerk, and back to the palace. And a hospital was standing by with a special supply of 250 pints of blood, carefully matched to the blood types of every royal guest.
Promptly at 9 a.m., a 21-gun salute sounded from the Dutch cruiser, De Ruyter, in the harbor. Carillons throughout the city began to peal, and a company of Dutch marines marched up to the palace to the tune of Colonel Bogie March. In wave upon wave, the royal procession proceeded to the town hall, silver-helmeted motorcyclists, limousines with the visiting kings and queens, six glittering coaches for the bridal couple, Queen Juliana, Prince Bernhard and their three younger daughters, and Claus's widowed mother, together with rank upon rank of blue-uniformed cavalry officers with high fur busbies. Said a watching Dutchman: "We look more military than the Germans."
Wilhelmina's Diadem. Beatrix herself had never looked happier, more poised—or prettier. Dressed in a white silk gown with a 15-ft. train, a huge diamond brooch, and the same pearl-and-diamond diadem that her grandmother, Queen Wilhelmina, had worn, she was first married to Claus in a private civil ceremony by Burgomeister Gijsbertus van Hall. Then, to the strains of Bach and Handel, the couple exchanged rings and "I do's" before 3,000 guests at the Westerkerk. Holding hands, both were so relaxed that they burst into giggles at one point during the sermon.