Well, the big event has now come and gone – and was a total success!

Honorary Consul Jetske certainly knows how to throw an excellent party! It was her first as Consul and a very important event. There are changes happening in the Dutch Royal Family as Queen Beatrix has resigned in order to allow her son, Prince Willem-Alexander to become King.

April 27 is Prince Willem-Alexander’s birthday and will be known as King’s Day during his reign. He will be the first male monarch of the Netherlands since 1890. His succession to the throne on April 30 is highly anticipated and will be a huge celebration in the Netherlands.

The regal Consul Jetske provided a perfect reception honouring Queen Beatrix, Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife, Maxima. As has been noted in early postings preparations for this reception have been taking place for a while. All of this preparation certainly paid off as the event could not have been any better.

The advance crew formed of Jetske, Louis (resident of #3) and myself arrived at Botswanacraft, the venue for the reception two hours in advance to set up. We joined there by Jetske’s best friend, Daphne who assisted me with decorating and preparing the cheese trays. Transforming the venue in which I am use to dancing up a storm late at night happened surprisingly quickly but with not a lot of time to spare.

As Louis, the bartender for the evening focused on setting of the bar, we set to work moving tables, decorating and ensuring all was ready by the time the invited guests would begin to arrive. I wish that I had of thought to take before pictures but as a goal orientated person as soon as my feet climbed out of the vehicle I was in full accomplishment mode and forgot to stop to take pictures.

However this what the venue looked like after we had worked our decorating magic:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So you can see, the venue looked wonderful and ready for the arrival of guests. I have no more pictures on my camera as I switched to the Consul’s camera to be official event photographer, logistics coordinator and everything else that needed to be done. I did capture a great picture of Peter taking a picture of me taking a picture of him 🙂

Oh, by the way the Advocaat that Jetkse and I made last Saturday was a huge hit and apparently extremely potent! Jetske and I are looking for to drinking our reserved bottle some quiet evening. I will let you know how it goes…….