Pekina Nordom's wedding to that Marc guy was aired on TLC's "A Wedding Story". I saw it a while back. It was quite interesting...but I never expected royalty to air their weddings on national television...oh well...
Yea, Sean...I live in Canada so it'll be no problem. It was on TLC last summer or something...Maybe it'll be reaired some day. It was really interesting because they had their wedding in Cambodia and they showed all the cool traditions they had. They went to see the King to thank them and kneel before them...then they had a traditional Buddhist wedding in the palace. It was one of the best episodes of "A Wedding STory" because it was so unique. All the others were so bland...but this one was really special.
This was in an American magazine or newspaper...
Pekina Norodom and Marc Coumeri
By Lois Smith Brady
Marc Coumeri, 26, a quiet mathematician who likes techno music, met
Princess Pekina Norodom of Cambodia, 31, nearly two years ago at 4 a.m.
under the big disco ball at Twilo, a Manhattan dance club. Mr. Coumeri
and Noel Thomas, his old math buddy from from Johns Hopkins University,
were walking through the crowd on the dance floor. When they bumped into
the princess, who prefers to be called Miss Norodom, and her friend
Divina Kwok, Mr. Thomas took Miss Kwok's arm and danced with her.
Stranded together, Miss Norodom and Mr. Coumeri began dancing, too.
Miss Norodom recalled thinking that Mr. Coumeri looked like Clark Kent
and danced like a kangaroo. "He just hops all over the dance floor,"
said the princess, who said nothing about her royal lineage that night.
Mr. Coumeri and Miss Norodom danced for hours, past breakfast until
noon, when the club closed. "It was pouring rain," Mr. Thomas
remembered, "and we all decided to go for dim sum in Chinatown. It was
really cute - Pekina and Marc had just met, and now they were walking
around Chinatown under one umbrella, squeezed tight."
Miss Norodom is a granddaughter of King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia,
who was forced into exile by a coup in 1970 that opened the door to the
Khmer Rouge. "The Khmer Rouge were killing all the educated people,"
Miss Norodom said. "You speak more than one language, you're gone."
Her family settled in Beijing, then still known as Peking, where she was
born on July 7, 1970. (Seven is her lucky number.) Her name, Pekina,
means Peking girl. When she was 10, her family moved to Connecticut.
Today, she is more East Coast than Far East, working as a product
manager at Timex, wearing black all the time, playing the saxophone and
going skiing and snowboarding.
King Sihanouk returned to Phnom Penh in 1993, and her parents, Yin Kim
and Yuvaneath Norodom, rejoined him at the palace, with its ornate
pavilions and staff of astrologers, gardeners and bodyguards.
"When I go visit," Miss Norodom said, "I have maids. People kneel at me
and address me as princess. I feel like saying, `No need to kneel down.'
I'm honored to be a princess, but I don't feel like one."
About 24 hours after she and Mr. Coumeri shared dim sum in New York,
Miss Norodom called him and asked him out on a utilitarian first date -
to the Ikea furniture store near Newark International Airport. As they
wandered through the store, testing couches and pouring imaginary coffee
for each other in the mock kitchens, "I thought, `I can picture myself
dating this guy,' " she said.
Weeks later, she told him on the phone that she was the granddaughter of
the king of Cambodia. "She asked if I recognized her last name,"
recalled Mr. Coumeri, who works at American Express in New York, using
mathematical models to judge the creditworthiness of potential card
holders. "I said, `No, should I?' "
He called his parents, Linda and John Coumeri, in Jackson, N.J., to tell
them he was dating a princess. "My mother's first reaction was like,
`Marc, don't you meet anyone normal?' " he said.
The couple were married in a Buddhist ceremony at Phnom Penh's royal
palace on May 30. Chanting monks in cantaloupe-color robes dipped roses
in scented water, which they shook over the couple as a blessing.
Afterward, a long procession of musicians in knickers escorted the
couple and their guests across the grounds to the throne hall, where the
king and queen waited to receive them.
"It was awesome," Benay Borow, the bridegroom's aunt, said. "How many
palaces have I been to? Not many. The Helmsley Palace is about it."
Mulling over the statistical chances of meeting a total stranger in a
club one night and then flying across the planet to marry her in a royal
wedding less than two years later, Mr. Thomas, the best man, said, "It
was an example of mathematical beauty."