To choose the wedding day, it was taken into account that, according to meteorological history, May 22 had not recorded rain in Madrid in decades. The forecasts failed and the wedding of Felipe de Borbón and Letizia Ortiz will be remembered for the merciless downpour that fell on the capital of Spain, but while the water clouded the celebrations, an interior sun protected the couple who starred in a wedding in front of millions of people. people and, also, they experienced an intimate celebration with codes that only they knew.
This Wednesday, twenty years later, the now Kings celebrate the anniversary in privacy, remembering the day the world watched them while they looked at each other.
The couple didn’t sleep much the night before their wedding. The dinner offered to the royal guests at the El Pardo palace ended late and both Letizia and Felipe woke up before 6 to prepare for the big day. The bride, who needed hours for makeup and hair, was calmer than the Prince, with whom she exchanged messages until each one began to dress for the occasion. Letizia did it in the Royal Palace and Felipe, in the Zarzuela.
The wedding dress, by Pertegaz, was ready and closely monitored since it arrived, on a special flight, from Barcelona and it was the Zarzuela maids and an assistant of the deceased couturier who helped the bride get dressed. She was left alone with them, after her mother, Paloma Rocasolano, briefly went to hug her daughter who would soon leave for Almudena to become Princess of Asturias.
Prince Philip’s entourage also gathered at the Royal Palace; The space is large enough to protect the bride’s vision of the surroundings. At 10:42, when the rain was already threatening, the Dukes of Calabria, those of Soria (Infanta Margarita and Carlos Zurita), Infanta Cristina and Iñai Urdangaron came out through the King’s Gate of the Royal Palace in the direction of the Almudena Cathedral; Infanta Elena and Jaime de Marichalar, King Juan Carlos on the arm of Infanta Pilar and, finally, Prince Felipe with Queen Sofia. The arrival of the groom and his mother at the entrance to the cathedral coincided with the start of the downpour, although they were still able to do without the umbrella.
Just at the moment in which the Prince and Queen Sofía entered the cathedral, Letizia, along with her father, Jesús Ortiz, and the boys and girls who acted as pages and ladies, plus the two young girls who acted as ladies of honor, left the hallway of the Royal Palace to cross, walking in a procession, the courtyard of the Armory in the direction of Almudena. Impossible, the rain began to fall with such intensity that she forced plan B to be put into action, consisting of using the Rolls Royce, already prepared, for both the bride and her godfather as well as for the little ones. But, the deluge made it practically impossible for the bride to get out of the car next to the cathedral stairs, although the access had been covered, without the water not only dazzling, almost destroying that moment.
Inside the cathedral, all the guests, groom and royal family included, shuddered at every thunderclap and the minutes passed without a trace of the bride. The security and protocol services could only look at the sky, hoping that it would clear long enough for the bride to be able to climb the Amudena stairs with the least possible risk. Finally, after 11:30, thirty minutes after the scheduled time, Letizia got into the Rolls and arrived at Almudena, got out of the car, wet the Manolo Blahnik shoes that Jaime de Marichalar had given her, and went up the stairs to leave behind to the journalist Letizia Ortiz and walk toward her new life.
After crossing the central nave of the cathedral, among kings, princes, politicians, authorities and friends, Letizia arrived in front of Felipe. “It’s all so beautiful,” was read on the bride’s lips, while their gazes were exchanged as, during the ceremony, their hands were crossed, with some handshakes with which they spoke in the code that only they knew and with which They had their own wedding.
