Say Hello to Laurentien, the Princess of PR

Date: 24/05/01

It's rare Entre Nous gets the chance to impersonate Hello - but we could not resist the opportunity offered by the weekend's royal wedding.

In case you missed it on TV, Laurentien Brinkhorst, vice-president of EU public-relations giant Adamson BSMG, married Prince Constantijn, third in line to the Dutch throne and former advisor to Dutch Commissioner Hans van den Broek.

Laurentien, daughter of Dutch farm minister Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst, will be leaving Brussels for London to be with her spouse. But we are told that she will continue to work with Adamson's clients and no doubt show that other Royal PR, Sophie, Duchess of Wessex, how it's done.

The ceremony was followed with keen interest in Belgium, not least because Laurentien's wedding outfits were created by Edouard Vermeulen, the designer who made Princess Mathilde's gown.

The Swedes are living up to their reputation as dot-com crazy with the success of their presidency website, eu2001.se. Stockholm reports more than 600,000 visitors to the site with up to 160,000 users a month logging on to check the goings-on of the EU - higher than any other presidency-site predecessor.

A particular success was the text messaging service that sent breaking news to the mobile phones of journalists. It's a shame the 250 subscribers to this service appear to have done little to boost the profits of struggling Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson.