I had written to Prince Guillaume and Princess Stéphanie, the Hereditary Grand Duke & Grand Duchess, last month for their 5th wedding anniversary. This reply came just under a month.
The envelope is the usual we see from Luxembourg. It is interesting to see the address placed so far over to the right.
More than half of my envelopes from Luxembourg have used this same car stamp from 2009. I assume they just have a huge stock of them. It is a shame, being one of the few royal families to use real stamps, that they don't show off more recent ones.
The postmark is for "Journee Mondiale du Diabète/World Diabetes Day" on November 14th. The postmark runs from October 25th - November 20th this year. This same postmark has been used in past years to mark World Diabetes Day.
The back of the envelope features the blue Luxembourg Crown.
This reply is formatted a little different from the others I have received. The Luxembourg Royals don't have a consistent layout they use. The placement of the crown and the date changes. The color, font, size, alignment, and style of the message also changes.
(Retired Grand Duke Jean's replies are more consistent, but his mail is handled by a different office.)
It looks like the message got a bit mixed up in translation. They made a few mistakes:
- "Their Royal Highness" should be plural, "Their Royal Highnesses"
- It should be "wedding anniversary," not "wedding birthday"
- In French, the word for birthday and anniversary is the same, "Anniversaire." So, an understandable translation error.
- There shouldn't be an "s" on "sincerely thanks you"
I would think part of this mistake come from not having a standard layout of the message. It seems like whoever made this reply was a little rushed.
If we look back at Henri & Maria Teresa's 35th Wedding Anniversary Reply from last year, you will see they didn't make the same mistakes. (The "s" on "thanks" is appropriate in this sentence.)
If you haven't already, check out our guide for Christmas 2017! I will probably start sending out my Christmas letters late next week. We recommend people have their Christmas letters and cards mailed out by December 5th.
