FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Princess Madeleine: A dynamic and modern princess finally gets married and gains the love and peace of mind she's always wanted ♥!; But what about the music? Me, I'd have gone with "This Guy's In Love With You"; #madde, #sweden, #tihi, #bröllopet, @JesperParnevik, @MarcusCooks

Official Royal Court photograph of Princess Madeleine of Sweden and Mr. Christopher O'Neill by Ewa-Marie Rundquist, Stockholm, June 8, 2013. © 2013 Kungahuset.se  
See more of the official wedding photographs at http://www.kungahuset.se/brollopet/pressrum.4.4ea495e313c19c119aa48cc.html?searchKey=category&searchQuery=&showImagesOnly=true
SVT video: Prinsessan Madeleine fick sin Chris. Ett ”ja” – och ett ”I will” I dag gifte sig prinsessan Madeleine och Christopher O'Neill i Slottskyrkan i Stockholm.
PUBLICERAD 8 JUNI 2013 - 15:13 – UPPDATERAD 8 JUNI 2013 - 20:46
http://www.svt.se/nyheter/sverige/kungligt-brollop-i-stockholm
Princess Madeleine: A dynamic and modern princess finally gets married and gains the love and peace of mind she's always wanted ♥!; But what about the music? Me, I'd have gone with "This Guy's In Love With You"; #madde, #sweden, #tihi, #bröllopet, @JesperParnevik, @MarcusCooks
Well, I watched the whole  kungliga bröllopet, royal wedding, LIVE on Saturday morning here in Hallandale Beach via both SVT Play and TV4 Play, going back-and-forth at the beginning but mostly watching SVT after the "I will's" and  the "Ja's," 

 Just like the annual Super Bowl, I pride myself on ignoring the lengthy pre-game coverage because at this point, you either fully know what's going on and everyone's back story or you don't, and I do with the happy couple, so I picked up the coverage right about 10 a.m Miami time and watched with great interest and amusement with my legal pad on one side of my desktop and some cold Dr. Pepper on the other. 

 (I don't think I've watched more than five minutes of the annual marathon of pre-Super Bowl TV coverage since the last time the Redskins played, when I lived in Arlington County, VA -January 1992.)

I found it sort of amusing in a counter-intuitive way that in a country as cosmopolitan and outward-looking as Sweden that a TV commentator actually seemed a little out-of-sorts that so much English was being spoken, but then Chris is British and American, and his family and friends could hardly be expected to undergo a crash course in Swedish just to know what was going on and being said at the Royal Chapel.

 And in his case, getting married on LIVE television, with millions watching, knowing that EVERYONE is focusing intensely on how he acts or any little mannerism or tic, it's not too much to ask that you get asked such important questions in English.

Above and below, some of my better screenshots; I'm having a problem with some of the photos, so I'll have more in the days ahead...









There were two pop songs that were sung very nicely once Madeleine and Chris were up front together for what what turned out to be quite some time actually compared to many weddings, royal, celebrity or otherwise.

Marie Fredriksson of Roxette sang "Ännu Doftar Kärlek" 
Just Click HERE:) YouTube Channel video: Marie Fredriksson "Ännu Doftar Kärlek"., from SVT1's coverage Uploaded June 8, 2013. http://youtu.be/FZkGjIHdHj4

and Peter Jöback sang Roberta Flack's Grammy-winning "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."
TheLpib1 YouTube Channel video: Peter Jöback "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" Uploaded June 8, 2013. http://youtu.be/szZinuE4bvI

If it were me choosing the music, instead of the latter song, I'd have chosen one which I know would have brought a big knowing smile to nearly everyone's face, and maybe even caused some people to sing sotto voce to themselves in church, since it's an instantly recognizable song that nearly everyone can sing because of the easy phrasing and tempo.
Herb Alpert's performance of Burt Bachrach's "This Guy's In Love With You"
thegoochman YouTube Channel video: Herb Alpert "This Guy's in Love with You" performed July 20, 1971. Introduced by The Carpenters, who recorded on his label, A&M Records. Uploaded March 8, 2008. http://youtu.be/4WZjqdPVaI0

 I think you see what I mean.


 Professional golfer Jesper Parnevik was a busy bee on Saturday, tweeting from the chapel, on the streets of Stockholm, on a boat and then at Drottningholm Palace.



Chris's speech at the post-wedding party about his late father brought everyone to tears:
http://www.aftonbladet.se/brollopet/article16930666.ab




 And world-famous Swedish chef Marcus Samuelsson, in Stockholm from his famous Red Rooster restaurant in NYC, where he hosted a family get-together in May, tweets:



* One last thing and I've gone back-and-forth on even mentioning this but....
There are, sadly enough, thousands if not tens of thousands of people in Sweden and elsewhere in the world whose lives are so miserable and full of bitterness -i.e. they have few friends and low self-esteem - that they have nothing better to do than troll on YouTube writing stupid and inane comments about the various videos regarding this weekend's wedding, insisting that Swedish taxpayers paid for everything associated with it, which is NOT true.
And that it's a conspiracy or it's this or it's that or...

 No, Madeleine's father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, is a very, very wealthy man, and while he isn't Queen of England wealthy, he has the means and the desire to pay for whatever needed to be paid for related to his youngest daughter's wedding.
It's really as simple as that.

 Madeleine, having the personality that she does and being fourth-in-line to the throne, knows perfectly well how bad it would look for everyone concerned if the taxpayers were being forced to pay for her wedding and the bridal flourishes within it.

 If taxpayers paid for it, you would have heard about that already, wouldn't you, no matter where YOU live?
If that were the case, the very competitive Swedish news media would be in a feeding frenzy to get to the bottom of it, leaving no stone unturned or invoice ignored.
And even in the U.S. and Great Britain, whatever information the Swedish media had unearthed would've surely made its way into the American and British dispatches about the wedding in the months leading up to it, wouldn't they?
Of course.
If it was true and there was proof, that would be hard to ignore. 

 But it isn't true.
You didn't read about it or hear about it because it's NOT true.
Roger Lundgren, the editor of a Swedish magazine about royalty, told Associated Press news agency the occasion was not as big as Crown Princess Victoria's wedding "because Madeleine is not a successor to the throne".
"Secondly, this is a private wedding - the king is paying for it himself," he added.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22823898

 But some people, whether sheerly out of ideology or cynicism and bitterness can't accept reality.
They can't accept that their wanting it to be true in order to prove some political point, DOES NOT make it true.
Only supportable facts make it true, not ideology.

 IF it were the opposite, that is, as all the oddball know-it-alls keep claiming, she would be properly mortified and no doubt insist the wedding take place in New York -where they already are living and plan to keep living- to prevent her father from being placed in a bad position.
Because her father has the means to pay the freight, the wedding was in Stockholm.
It's no more complicated than that.

 I mention all this because I shared this small but fairly well-known fact yesterday with someone online, and this morning, I'm getting dozens of angry emails from people, mostly in Sweden and other parts of Europe, who insist that, contrary to the maxim proposed by the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, they are entitled to their own facts.
No, they're entitled to their own opinions, not their own facts.

It just seems very strange and quite sad to me that so many people want to take the time to show how truly uninformed they are to strangers who actually know the facts. 
Trust me, if I don't know something, the last thing in the world I'd want to do would be to contact someone who actually knows what they're talking about just to show how ignorant I was.
But clearly, everyone doesn't feel that way!

 Especially people who spend an inordinate amount of time on YouTube watching videos that seem to make them angry politically.

Knowing what Madeleine has been through the past few years, I'm very happy for her that she can FINALLY have the life she's wanted all along, and has FINALLY found the peace of mind she's longed for...

But as these emails I've received make clear, lots of people want her to be just as plain miserable as them.
But she's not -she's very happy and relieved!

Again, the Royal Court photographs by Ewa-Marie Rundquist are here, so take a look: http://www.kungahuset.se/

Here's what Aftonbladet said about the pics: http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article16929613.ab

More info, photos and videos at:


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