Princess Benigna Reuss marries at Schleiz

Princess Benigna of Reuss and Spanish nobleman Oscar de Ascoz y Planes were married on Saturday at the Schleiz church.

Although the church is Lutheran, the service was Roman Catholic, as the bride and groom are Roman Catholics. 

Cardinal Dario Castrillon y Hoyos read a message to the couple from Pope Benedict XVI, and in his bi-lingual sermon, he praised the church for allowing the Roman Catholic service to take place.

Most of the 180 guests came from the European aristocracy, as German women wore "luscious hats" and the Spanish women wore black mantillas.  Among the guests was the bride's 92-year-old grandmother, Princess Woizlawa Feodora Reuss, the widow of Prince Heinrich I, who died in 1982. (Heinrich was the adopted son of Hereditary Prince Heinrich XLV, who disappeared in 1945.)
She was very happy about the marriage of her granddaughter, the first of her eleven grandchildren to marry.  She regretted that the marriage could not take place in Gera, noting that the Soviets destroyed the Reuss' properties there.

Princess Benigna was born at Frankfurt-am-Main on December 29, 1980.  She and her brother, Prince Heinrich XXIV,  are the children of Prince Heinrich X Reuss and his first wife, Elisabeth Akerhielm af Margarethelund.  She converted to the Roman Catholicism in 1987, three years after the birth of her son.   The two children were baptised in the Lutheran church, after their mother's conversion, they became Roman Catholics.
http://schleiz.otz.de/web/schleiz/startseite/detail/-/specific/Reussische-Prinzessin-heiratet-spanischen-Adeligen-in-der-Schleizer-Bergkirche-1420054938

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DbCuqHYk6o&feature=youtu.be&hd=1