This is being called a “royal wedding” but it wasn’t really, because Eleonore von Habsburg is not a member of a current, sitting royal family in any country. Still, she’s dethroned royalty, or royal-adjacent or whatever. Eleonore von Habsburg is *that* kind of Habsburg, the kind which ruled half of Europe for a long time (I’m not going to look it up). Her great-grandparents were the last Emperor and Empress of Austria. Her father is Archduke Karl von Habsburg, the “current head of the Austrian Imperial family House of Habsburg-Lorraine.”
So why are we talking about her? I like random European faux-royals. And she got married! It was another quarantine wedding. She married Belgian racing driver Jérôme d’Ambrosio in a civil service in Monaco:
Eleonore von Habsburg — the Archduchess of Austria and Royal Princess of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia — married Belgian racing driver Jérôme d’Ambrosio on Monday in a civil ceremony in Monaco. Like Beatrice and Edoardo, their plans for a church wedding were canceled due to coronavirus restrictions, but they plan to have a larger celebration with family and friends when possible.
Instead, they opted for a small civil ceremony at a registry office with the bride and groom’s parents and their sisters acting as witnesses. The mayor of Monaco, Georges Marsan, was also in attendance and posed with the happy couple for a photo.
Eleonore, 26, who works as a jewelry designer, chose a white off-the-shoulder Carolina Herrera dress that fell just below the knee for the small-scale nuptials and accessorized with a chic fascinator veil. d’Ambrosio, 34, chose a navy suit accompanied by a light blue tie for the occasion.
I’m reminded of the way people used to get married – some of the most glamorous couples in the world just ran off and got married in some civil servant’s office or they eloped whenever they had a spare weekend. The wedding industrial complex would have us believe that every bride wants a giant, puffy gown and a giant wedding party. That hasn’t always been the case! Maybe we’re going back to a simpler time, at least for weddings.
Anyway, I think Eleonore’s civil wedding look is very chic! I like the off-the-shoulder style and her netted veil! She looks perfect for this simple wedding.
Here are some additional photos of them – he’s cute and she’s got some good angles.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
She looks like a mix of Julie Delpy and Uma Thurman. Monaco – how awesome!
She sure does!
I follow F1 (he isn’t at that rarified circuit yet) but it does seem all race drivers live in Monaco. No taxes for the rich. They look cute & for the a member of the ‘Habsburg jaw” fam, she is perfectly lovely. Love the simple elegance of her look
Considering how the Habsburg dinasty was the model case for inbreeding, I think she got lucky she has some good angles. Love the simplicity of the dress, very chic.
Hahahaha I thought the same thing!
Haha. That was the “ugly” dynasty, right? She got damn lucky.
I think that’s because Eleanore looks like her mother. You can see the similarities if you google pictures of Francesca (her mother) on her wedding day.
The other two (the “heir” Ferdinand and the youngest daughter Gloria) look like Karl/Habsburg
She still has traces of the Hapsburg jaw area. Good thing she’s expanding the gene pool.
The Habsburg jaw thing was more an issue for the Spanish branch. At least Sissi and her husband were both good looking:)
@Zuri, that jaw is the real survivor in the family, isn’t it? We can see 18th century aristos sporting that jaw. And here it is, still here!
@Milly- it absolutely is.
My first thought was “oh she definitely looks like Habsburg but not in that Habsburg way. Good for her!”
Then I berated myself for being an a$$. lol
What in cowboy yahoo HELL is the mother wearing?
!
+1
No one but the groom looks good in that group picture. His suit actually fits – the rest look cheap and a little outdated. The bride’s dress looks like nothing special to me, and doesn’t seem to fit well from the side view. I love the modest ceremony but I would have wanted a prettier dress.
I was thrown by the fact that the people on the right look gigantic compared to the people on the left. I kind of like that – it seems like it was a very relaxed ceremony focused on the important thing of the marriage and not stage managed for appearances as the priority.
I like the navy blue dress, is that the MOG wearing it?
Yaaaaaaas 😂😂. My immediate first thought was ‘wait, Fergie was invited to this?’ 😂😂
I thought she was Fergie too. I can’t muster up any happiness or good feelings about rich people today. These two just look evil to me. I see rich people and just wonder what perverse, depraved deeds they are up to when nobody’s looking.
Me too! Who told her that yellow belt went with beige?! Everything about it is wrong from the shoes to the hat. She looks like a beautiful woman though.
My eyes went right to her. Not in a good way.
Lose the hat and a different belt and it would be fine.
Congratulations! They’ve been engaged since 2017/2018 I think so I’m sure they’re happy to actually be married by now.
She’s got quite the interesting ancestry on her mother’s side too. Her mother is a baroness as her father (Eleanore’s grandfather) is a German baron. Their family was estimated to have a net worth of 2 billion during the early 2000s at least. Her grandmother (who does pop up on her mother’s Instagram) is a Scottish aristo/landed gentry who was a model/it girl back in the day. Also had a romance with Alexander Onassis – much to the displeasure of his father Aristotle.
O how I love her blue striped dress!!!!
You mean the beach towel one?!
Lol! You’re right. I still love it.
So cute and flirty. I love that red dress despite the feather boa along the bottom. And no buttons in sight, lol! Congrats to the happy couple!
I really like this post-lockdown small weddings trend. We’re used to wealthy people having massive three days destination weddings with 500 guests so it feels new and fun.
Also,I laughed a bit when I read that Eleonore is a jewelry designer. It seems like half of those faux-royals/socialites are “jewelry designers”,which most of the time means being married to a rich man and going on a lot of holidays.
@othercleo – I thought that too re the “jewelry designer”. Apparently she also has a law degree, just like Chelsy Davy. Being a race car driver would seem to be a similar hobby – I mean career – for a certain type of wealthy man. He’s Formula E, though (electric race cars) – never went far in formula 1.
I had the same reaction to her job, definitely one of the go-to occupations when you don’t need to work.
Thank you Kaiser, for the clarifying intro, as an Austrian I really appreciate it. We are not keen on our own ex-royals.
But they look lovely! I hope the ‘small wedding’ trend stays for a while. The wedding industry is so bloated and the amount of money people feel pressured to spend makes me so uncomfortable.
I like the blue stripe dress. Together they are very attractive and they look happy.
I like the smaller weddings too, some of those elaborate heavy wedding dresses seem to be an endurance test to wear, IMO.
Anybody finding happiness these days is good news. I need more good news, even it if it’s only a cute dog picture. 🙂
So I’m good friends with one of her cousins! I went to Uni with him and when I met him I was like “wait, Von Hapsburg? Like THE Von Hapsburg?” He’s really great actually, has spent his entire career working for the UN, mostly the United Nations Development Program, and has worked in international aid and development around the world. He married a gorgeous South Sudanese woman (a chief’s daughter, I think – he had to give her dad 100 cows, the pics were insane). Their kids have properly lost any Hapsburg inbreeding that may have occurred and are just gorgeous. Not much to do with this story per say, it’s just my very own royalty adjacent story that I like to share 🙂
His mother dresses just as insanely as the mom here in this pic, so there’s that.
Small world! I know Ferdinand through work 😉
Small world indeed!! 🙂
Isn’t he wonderful though? I love him! I did the IDHA with him a million years go and he’s still one of my favourite people
What a nice story! Thanks for sharing.
I don’t know any of these people, but I just want to say that I love this whole exchange. 🙂
I really just love the 100 cows detail. Was that a dowry??? Do they still do that in South Sudan?
I love that branch of the von hapsburgs. Both he and his brother live on the African continent. His brother is married to Lei, a lawyer (originally from South Carolina I believe) and lives in South Africa now I believe, formerly in Mozambique. They all do seem like really nice people.
I hope the small wedding trend continues. I think it is way more romantic and intimate. Looking back 20 years later on our huge wedding, the amount of stress and time and energy that went into it was insane, not to mention the money. It will be interesting to see how current events shape the future.
I feel the same way. However, when I look back on the photos, my dad, who passed away 5 years ago, was so insanely happy. After much negotiating, he invited everyone he wanted to invite. It really was a perfect day.
I’ve been loving all the simple weddings! When I got married 6 years ago, it was in a friend’s back yard with about 15 people. Whole thing cost less than $1,000, including dress, flowers, food, booze, officient, and liscense. The only thing I regret is not having a photographer, just relying on the guests to use their phones. I don’t feel any less married for not having spent an obsene amount of money!
I was always for smaller weddings but alas we are both Asians lol.
That dress screams 2009 to me and I hate it.
Ha, finally some people i can spill the beans about ( a little bit at least).
Her father is not liked very much within the rest of the Habsburg family, they called him ” a not so bright candle” and her mother is not liked within the family at all.
She was said to have affairs in the open, and to compromise the rest of the family.
And no one within der Familie liked her curating comtemporary art.
Money seemed to play a roll in her parents wedding, love not so much.
I’ve read variants of this on forums and my own conclusions seem to match this so nice to have some “confirmation”.
Francesca was a society IT girl/party girl. So I know the uber conservative Habsburg weren’t too happy to see her marry in. Not to mention, the family wanted Karl to marry a distant cousin. That didn’t happen – probably because Karl needed Francesca’s family’s $$$$$. She was so disliked, many Habsburg’s apparently wrote to Otto (Karl’s father) saying they disproved the marriage.
I have no “confirmation” of this but Karl comes off as arrogant. Not as much as the deposed Greek royals but still. His kids seem nice enough though.
Wait. So the “IT” girl/party girl from back in the day, the one that had numerous affairs out in the open, is the Fergie look alike on the right, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza???
😳
@Kim: Correct. That is indeed Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza
Oh I love learning about royal adjacent families! Just realized this girl’s mom is part of the Thyssen-Bornemisza family! I learned about them when I visited the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid when I lived there, I believe it was started by Francesca’s stepmother Carmen? These families are all interconnected and kind of incestuous, it really makes your brain hurt if you think about it too much!
The dress gives off summer beach wedding vibes and I think a little out of place for a civil wedding but Monaco is on the water and is known for its big yachts (I don’t remember if there is an actual beach in Monaco though I’ve been there once). Her mother’s outfit looks ridiculous. Her husband is pleasant to look at. I’m kind of hoping COVID-19 will bring in a fad of smaller, more intimate weddings. People don’t need big, splashy affairs. Just go to City Hall with a few loved ones and just do it!
She may not be an official royal but I bet that name and lineage opens a lot of doors. Very pretty dress, gorgeous fabric. They look so happy and summer chic. Her parents are so tall. I think she’s actually slightly taller or similar height to her groom. If nothing else, this virus will dampen some of the wedding hysteria and big splashy weddings that cost way too much money. These mini weddings have their own unique charm and puts the focus back on the vows and couple. I bet once things return to “ normal “, some couples won’t even bother with a big follow up festivity.
Thank you for pointing out FAUX royals and FAUX nobility. I wish people would do the same with Greece (who had a “royal” family for a grand total of 130 years, LOL), and Italy (like Beatrice’s husband), and Germany (like “Prince” Ernst, Princess Caroline’s husband). The only thing worse than actual royalty and nobility giving themselves airs and pretending they’re better than others, is faux royalty and nobility doing the same.
LOL right? like all the small areas in Germany that were noble or whatever before unification – Albert, 12th Prince of Thurn and Taxis!
she looks so young. Man im feeling old
Civil weddings are mandatory in the EU. The UK managed to escape that particular edict but in the rest of the EU everyone has the compulsory civil wedding and then the big Church do. We could still see them saying I do in church a year from now.
I love this and honestly, I lover her. I have a weird thing with the Habsburgs – maybe my Austro-Hungarian ancestry.
BUT yes I also agree with the wedding industrial complex. It is so hard to plan a wedding and fight against that. I got married in September last year at a brewery my husband worked for, we did invite people and had a traditional ‘new’ wedding in that way – but we wanted a party mostly with our friends.
I do find it more romantic though to do the civil ceremony for some reason. Or small weddings.
About a decade ago, my grandfather gave me my great-grandmother’s wedding outfit in her old suitcase. It was a navy blue crepe silk dress with a rose pink waffle weave coat. I’m sure the accessories were just as lovely but they are since long gone. She and my great-grandfather married at the courthouse. (Now, my grandfather and his wife are petty aholes who take gifts back when you don’t do exactly as they expect, so I was forced to return this beautiful gift so he could give it to a local museum instead. This was in response to me gently drawing a boundary with his wife and her pushing and pushing until I told her that no meant no, but I digress.) I was so surprised to see how different things were 100 years ago just in terms of what was important to people. My own wedding wasn’t over the top or glamorous – it was a micro wedding before the term even existed and I wore a very simple strapless silk bridesmaid dress in white with an unadorned veil, low profile gold sandals from Target, and my great-grandmother’s aquamarine ring. But it was still more planning and more of an event than popping down to the courthouse, which by the end of things was what I actually wanted to do. 😂
I love the dress while in motion but not digging the profile shot of it. The bright blue fan is a nice touch!