Friday, September 14, 2012

Royal engagement: Oldenburg- Sanders

Duchess Rixa of Oldenburg, who will celebrate her 42nd birthday on September 17, is engaged to marry Stephan Sanders, a Dutch citizen.  The wedding, according to the current issue of Bunte, will take place later this year.

Rixa, a designer and events planner, is the second of three children of Duke Friedrich August of Oldenburg and his first wife, Princess Marie Cecile of Prussia.  

The bride-to-be's older brother, Duke Paul, married to Maria del Pilar Méndez de Vigo y Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg, converted to Roman Catholicism several years before his marriage, and is active in Pro Europe Christiana Federation.  They have three sons and one daughter,

Her younger sister, Duchess Bibiane, is married to Peter Dorner, and they have two children.

Rixa studied fashion in Paris, and stayed there after graduation, working for several major fashion houses, including Givenchy and Hermés.  In November 2005, she became  engaged to Philip Medows, who was 13 years her junior.    She called the engagement "a mistake.  This will not happen again."   Previous to her putative engagement, she had a long term relationship with Michel Soyer.

Some years, the duchess, a great-great-granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II, was introduced to the Prince of Wales.  She said: "I am your cousin. But he had no idea who I was."

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