Haett(s)

The royal wedding was certainly a nice event to watch,  and the young couple seem like just plain ordinary folks. They would fit in well in our village. The future king and his brother are, well;  hail fellows well met types or so they seem. Kate is a real dazzler. 
The only commotion came from some rather (to our eyes) amazing hats and to be historical about it -  haetts - or hottrs - (or that Red Hat of the Cardinals). It appears that hats came about as a "toss-up" between protection from the inclements, a sign of office or perhaps rank, and a hood of sorts - probably the oldest meaning.  We assume that someone looked "really spiffy" in a hat at one point and they became fashion statements. 

Never stopping at understatement when excess can be reached, a few of the females who went to Kate's wingding pulled out all the stops.  We all got a good chuckle but that was and is the tradition there and,well, good for them...although we note that some wore them better than others.

Rummaging around in some archives in our village, we came across a picture of a few of the local aristocracy from some years back and we point out that the English have nothing on any of them.  We don't know the names or the reason for the portrait but it had to be our version of a royal wedding at the very least but I won't make up a story when a picture will do.

If anyone has any information whatsoever about this, please let us know as frankly we are dying of curiosity.  It had to be some pumpkins of an event - furs, feathers and haetts.  In some odd way these women look smashing.  We do hope that the picture was taken on the coldest night of the year.

We do note in amazement that the two women in the front seem to be in variations of the same dress......