Wedding of Prince Nikolaos and Tatiana Blatnik

Prince Nikolaos of Greece and Denmark, the second son of the exiled King Constantine and Queen Anne-Marie of Greece, married his longtime girlfriend Tatiana Blatnik today at the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas on the Greek island of Spetses. The members of the Greek royal family descend from George I of Greece, a son of Christian IX of Denmark, and are therefore styled as princes and princesses of Greece and Denmark. Through her marriage Tatiana became Princess Nikolaos of Greece and Denmark, not Princess Tatiana; like the British royals, women marrying into the Greek royal family do not become princesses in their own right.

The guests included Queen Sofia of Spain, King Constantine’s sister, along with the Prince and Princess of Asturias, Infanta Elena, and Infanta Cristina and her husband; Queen Margrethe of Denmark, Queen Anne-Marie’s sister, along with Crown Princess Mary, Prince Joachim, and Princess Marie; Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima of The Netherlands; Crown Prince Haakon of Norway; Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel, Prince Carl Philip, and Princess Madeleine of Sweden; and, from the British royal family, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent and their daughter Lady Gabriella Windsor. The British royals have a habit of sending lower-ranked members of the family to overseas royal weddings although a Kent younger son is even more junior than usual. However, Prince Michael is a son of Princess Marina of Greece, so he has a family connection with the Greek royals.

Prince Nikolaos was born in 1969 in Italy, where the Greek royal family had settled after being exiled two years earlier. In 1973 the family moved to England, where King Constantine and Queen Anne-Marie still live, and Prince Nikolaos was educated at the Hellenic College of London, a school founded by his parents to educate Greek children (the school closed in 2005). In 1993 he obtained his degree in international relations from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. During his time at Brown he took a sabbatical to join the British Army on a short-service limited commission and served in the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.

After working in the media in New York, he spent three years working in London for NatWest Markets, the corporate and investment-banking division of the National Westminster Bank. In 1998 he left the bank to work in his father’s Private Office, where he still works.

His engagement to Tatiana Blatnik was announced in December 2009, although their relationship had been going on for several years by then. Not much information is known about Ms Blatnik’s background. She was born in Venezuela in 1980 to a Slovenian father and a German mother; her maternal grandmother is Elinka Countess von Einsiedel. She was raised in Switzerland after moving there as a young child. She graduated from Georgetown University in Washington DC with a degree in sociology.  She works in public relations as an event planner for the designer Diane von Furstenberg in London.

Since Prince and Princess Nikolaos both work in London, they are expected to make their home there after the wedding.

For photos of the wedding, please see this thread.

By Helen | Published in: Greece | Tags: Prince Nikolaos, Tatiana Blatnik, Wedding