The Royal Wedding (2)

6.30 pm - Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel,
greeting the People together from the Palace.

Around 500.000 people were gathered on the streets of Stockholm on this day (19 June 2010).

 No mistake about being happy!

  

Crown Princess Victoria speaking to the people.

-♥-♥-♥-

I had not really planned to keep watching the whole evening, but I ended up doing so. It was really quite a unique occasion in many ways. Swedish Television was allowed 10 cameras within the palace, rolling most of the evening. We did not get to watch them eat (four courses) but we got to listen to the speeches, and see the bride cut the wedding cake, and the newlywed couple dance the first waltz. I have to say that they succeeded unusually well in making this whole wedding a celebration for “all the people” and just not for the guests invited. (Not so few. Around 1200 something in the church, and 600 something at the dinner.)

8:15 pm – Arriving to the Wedding Dinner Party

King Carl XVI Gustaf and Eva Westling, mother of the bridegroom.

 
Queen Silvia and Olle Westling, father of the groom.

 
The happy couple surrounded by servants in historical uniforms.

 
The Queen and Prince Daniel’s father 

Princess Madeleine, sister of the bride

 
Prince Carl Philip (brother of the bride),
sitting next to Anna Westling (sister of the groom)

The Table of Honour

Wine being served

 
A glimpse of one of the four courses. 

 
Stockholm at 9.20 pm

  9.50 pm – The King speaking

 
Daughter listening to her father

A Toast

  Stockholm at 10:20 pm

 


10:50 pm - The father of the groom speaking

Son listening to his father

  Stockholm at 11:10 pm

11:23 pm – The Bridegroom speaking

    
Touched and happy bride listening to her husband

The speeches at this wedding were all very good, and with quite a personal touch. One thing that sticks in my memory, is Daniel himself saying that it took more than one kiss to turn him into a prince. (The couple have known each other eight years.)

11:47 pm 
The cutting of the Wedding Cake (a 3 m tall creation)

 
The couple with two of the young bridesmaids

 
Mingling with the guests

 
00:35 am, entering the ball room
ushered in by the Romeo and Juliet Choir
(choir members wearing the red dresses)

 
The First Waltz

 
The King and Queen joining
 

The King now dancing with the mother of the groom,
and the Queen with the father of the groom.

And then, finally, the TV cameras were turned off…

… and phew, this crazy blogger obsessed with taking photos from the TV screen could finally also put her camera down and go to bed …

-♥-♥-♥-

The Royal Wedding (1)

I could not resist getting some shots “of my own” of the wedding between our Crown Princess Victoria and her Daniel; even if only from the TV screen…

3:40 pm
The King escorted his daughter into the church.

“I do.”

  

4:25 pm
Leaving the church as husband and wife – and Daniel on top of all with a bunch of new titles: Prince, Royal Highness, Duke, and Knight.

It did not rain! - and the 7 km ride through the streets of Stockholm in an open carriage went all according to plan.

The Prince has obviously been practicing his waving.

The boat ride on the royal pleasure barge also went according to plan.

Greetings from big ships… and a submarine:

 

 

5:40 pm
Landing at the Stockholm Palace.

 

The terrace in front of the Palace, decorated with the newly-wed couple’s own brand new monogram.

Today’s The Day

I’m flagging today - with the help of my little Scarecrow Gardener (given to me by a friend who knows I like pottering about in a small scale on my balcony).

It is the Big Day for the Royal Family: Crown Princess Victoria getting married to her “frog prince” – her former personal trainer, gym owner and “man of the people” Mr Westling, soon-to-be Prince Daniel.

If you like, you can watch the Finale of yesterday’s Grand Celebration Concert for the happy couple here. (Video from Swedish Television)

… and here is a picture from the newspaper of our Town representative (local politician) carrying the Wedding Gift 1,5 km through streets of Stockholm that had been cut off from traffic (including taxis)… And yes, it was raining!

Here, too, I woke up to rain this morning. 
Remains to be seen whether the sun will be shining or rain pouring down on the royal couple this afternoon. I’ll not be spending the whole day in front of the TV, but I think I will watch the actual wedding ceremony, starting at 3.30 pm.

There are 2315 media people from all over the world keeping watch over the “show”, so I guess where ever you happen to be today, there is probably going to be some mentioning of the event in your news, too.

-♥-♥-

Incidentally, here is another couple that got married on the same date, 56 years ago:

My parents. Small wedding without a lot of “fuss”. They were married nearly 55 years, but did not get to celebrate their 55th anniversary last year. They were parted by the death of my mother on 26 May.

-♥-♥-

Mixed Up

 

This week I’ve spent some time trying to come up with better ways of (re-)organizing my photos on the computer.

Right now I’m at a stage in the process where I seem to be in danger of just making more of a mess of things than I started out with.

I switched to digital photography in 2006; but for the first three years, I still only took about 3-400 pictures a year. I filed them per month, and it was not a problem. I also had prints made of the best ones and continued to paste those into proper photo albums.

Last year in July, all of a sudden I went photo-crazy. I had been keeping this blog for six months. In July on top of that I joined the shared photo blog Soaring Through The World. From then on, I started taking my camera with me where ever I went. And made use of it… It’s been fun, and I’ve learned a lot . BUT. Since 1 July 2009 until now I have taken over 5300 photos. (My camera is keeping count.) I.e. more photos per month than I used to take per year. (It should also be noted that I have not even been further than ~20 km away from my home during this time…)

The 5300 are only “straight from the camera” shots and do not include edited copies, or collages, or scanned pictures. Those come into “problem” categories of their own.

I’m sure that in this digital age of ours, I’m not the only one with photo-organizing problems. What I’d be curious to know is:

How do you do it? How do you file and store your digital photos in a clever way that makes it easy (?) to find your way back to the pictures that you no longer remember exactly when you took?

I started out with a filing system which came with my camera. But that got messed up when I started moving pictures around, making changes in my original folder system. Then I started over. Then my (old) computer crashed. I had the originals saved, but not my edits. I started over again, on my (old) laptop. And then a few months later started over again on my new laptop; now tagging all new photos in Photoshop Elements. After a few months I find this too is growing into a complex science in itself, with Categories and Sub-Categories and Keyword tags… which, it seems, do not get automatically transferred to copies I make using other software (like Picasa).

Picasa on the other hand goes kind of crazy when I start making extra copies of folders, like I’m doing now (so as to be sure I don’t lose anything while messing around).

What I was hoping to accomplish was really to simplify things, by abandoning a system with too many sub-folders (which were not a big problem with Picasa, but causing me a lot of tiresome clicking and searching with Windows Live Writer).

If anyone has some words of wisdom and experience to share, please do so before I get even worse entangled…!

By now you’re probably wondering about the photos in this post. The common thread between text and pictures is supposed to be expressed in the title - “mixed up”…

Yesterday I went to have a look at a temporary fashion outlet in an exhibition hall (originally an engine shed). The new clothes for sale turned out to be all mixed up with old machinery and stuff borrowed from the Textile Industry Museum.

I did not find anything I wanted to buy (typical teenage fashion) but it was an interesting place to take photos!

Oh, and you should imagine disco music in the background, too (rather loud).

Mixed Up: Mixed together in an uncertain manner; confused, muddled or bewildered.

BTT: Old Books or New?

http://btt2.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/now-or-then/

Do you prefer reading current books? Or older ones? Or outright old ones? (As in, yes, there’s a difference between a book from 10 years ago and, say, Charles Dickens or Plato.)

I like to read a mix of current and older books. Even a few 'outright old ones' now and then; although reading only those would get a bit too heavy, I think ;) But I do enjoy reading and re-reading some of the classic novels from the late 18th, 19th and early 20th century. British and Swedish authors especially, but also some of the Russians and the French (in translation). I never read Plato, but I did read (for example) Confessions by St Augustine of Hippo (354-430). I don't think I've read every novel by Dickens, but some of them I've read twice. But then I've been reading for a long time by now... ;)

Currently reading/listening to:


Unseen Academicals (2009) by Terry Pratchett  - No 37 (!) in the Discworld series.

Barn av sin stad ('Children of their City') (1962) by Per Anders Fogelström  - second in a series of historical novels about Stockholm; this one covering the period from 1880-1900.

Curious Myths of the Middle Ages by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) (a chapter now and then).

Never-Ending Stories

A few weeks ago, I reported that our Town council had decided to give away (and yet keep) the [in]famous sculpture Cloned Frogs on Gala Dress, as a wedding gift to our Crown Princess Victoria and her husband-and-Prince-to-be Daniel. (The wedding takes place this Saturday.)

This story seems to just go on and on... Today the newpaper reports that the artist (you know who) decided to make a miniature, and donate that to our Town, in order for the Town to actually pass that one on to the royal couple.

Actually, for a miniature it's rather big. The Town representative who is supposed to take it to Stockholm and give it away was a little taken aback when it arrived. He seems to have been thinking he would be able to just put it in a bag...

Picture scanned from the newspaper.

What the paper does not comment on is the fact (to me rather obvious!) that this "mini" is not at all an exact copy of the bigger statue.  Take a minute to compare:

Do you see what I mean? Look at the waistlines. The new one seems to be made to "grow" in... 

I hope for the royal family's sake that they will be able to find some obscure nook of the castle to put this in, where they don't actually have to look at it every day. I would also really like to know (or on second thought - perhaps I wouldn't!) how the minds of our local politicians work. As for the artist, well... I still suspect that he is his own biggest fan, and loving all the publicity.

---

We have another sculpture in town that has been here for a few years now: Bodhi. I think on the whole he is rather popular. He has however also become a popular target for student pranks. Because he is not really easy to get to - standing in the river as he is - I guess it has become somewhat of a challenge...

Last year, someone put a wreath of flowers on his head:

This year, he was decorated with a graduation hat:

Photo from the newspaper

Last year, that wreath remained on his head for weeks. But this year - with sculpture festival and all going on - he was not allowed to keep the hat... I only saw the hat in the paper, so I borrowed their photo.