Welcome to a royal wedding like no other

However, his mother, Veruschka Urquhart, and his paternal aunt, opera singer Shirley Verrett, vehemently dispute this. They say David was in fact a builder who went bankrupt twice, while Urquhart warned in an interview with magazine Se og Hør last year that her estranged son is a dangerous, lying manipulator who has “brainwashed” his royal bride.

Verrett responded angrily by sending his mother a letter urging her to quit her job, threatening her with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit and stating that she had not been invited to the wedding.

What is not in dispute is that Verrett has a criminal history. In 1991, he was sentenced to five years in prison for felony arson and trespassing after throwing a party in a vacant house that was set on fire. He was arrested again in 1993 and 2011 for crimes including fare evasion and threatening his Los Angeles landlord with murder and “black magic.” In 2015, he was charged with assault after a domestic violence attack on his then-fiancée, massage therapist Hank Greenberg.

But most disturbing are Verrett’s wild health claims. In his 2019 book Spirit Hacking , which was shelved by publisher Cappelen Damm, he declares that children get cancer if they’re unhappy, that chemotherapy is a scam, and that women should buy his exercises to “clean” their vaginas because casual sex attracts underground spirits.

In 2022, Verrett sold a medallion that he promised would cure COVID until Norwegian authorities shut him down. He rails against 5G and the Illuminati, says he has risen from the dead, and that he knew the 9/11 attacks were coming but chose not to intervene. Verrett also claims that naughty children and suicidal people are possessed by evil spirits.

You might think that this horrific statement would particularly upset Martha Louise, given that her first husband, writer Ari Behn, committed suicide, but she has been dating and working with Verrett since May 2019. Although they believe they first met centuries ago, “I have memories of us in Egypt,” Verrett said. “She was my queen and I was a pharaoh.”

Martha Louise stepped down as a senior member of the Norwegian royal family in November 2022, but senior figures have continued to criticize the union. In 2023, politician Ole Henrik Krat called Bjørkholt Verrett “an unscrupulous and dangerous charlatan”, while many in the Norwegian media have called for Martha Louise to be stripped of her “princess” title. She recently used the title and her royal monogram on a special wedding gin, but was forced to retract it after an uproar.

But that was just one element of this elaborate New Age event, which began Thursday with a meet and greet at Hotel 1904 in the Norwegian coastal town of Alesund. The couple wore matching, custom-made bubblegum pink outfits by Martha Louise’s brand Hest. The princess wore a heart-shaped belt buckle to symbolize, she said, that “love conquers all.”

On Friday, guests were ferried to the four-star Union Hotel in Geiranger village (a UNESCO World Heritage site), overlooking waterfalls and mountains. A glamorous Latin-themed cocktail party with salsa dancing followed. The wedding ceremony will take place around 1pm on Saturday (8pm AEST), followed by afternoon tea and then a gala dinner and party (with the bar open until 3am). Finally, there will be a post-wedding brunch on Sunday, reportedly featuring performances by Stevie Wonder and the Black Eyed Peas.

The wedding party will include seven bridesmaids and seven groomsmen — the former likely including Martha Louise’s daughters, Maud Angelica, 21, Leah Isadora, 19, and Emma Tallulah, 15. The Reverend Margit Lovise Holte will officiate, while the Reverend Michael Beckwith, a New Thought minister whose Los Angeles church has been attended by Oprah Winfrey, is also in attendance. Doria Ragland, mother of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is also taking part.

Instead of the country’s national broadcaster and news agency covering the wedding, as is customary for royal occasions, she and Verrett have struck lucrative deals with Netflix (which is making a documentary about them) and Hello! magazine. Guests must adhere to a social media ban – although Martha Louise has already given details on her own Instagram.

The head of communications for the Royal House of Norway, Guri Varpe, has confirmed that the rest of the royal family (including Martha Louise’s parents, King Harald and Queen Sonja, and her brother Crown Prince Haakon, who are all staying aboard the royal yacht) will not be photographed or filmed, as that would be a nuisance to Netflix and Hello! unfair access.

But that decision may also reflect their serious reservations about this marriage. Although Martha Louise de London Telegraph that her parents “have grown to love Durek very much,” she admits that this union is “extremely, terribly out of the box.”

Other signs that this won’t be, as Verrett put it, “just a typical wedding” include the dress code for the pre-wedding party, which – in a departure from royal protocol – is “sexy and cool”. For the ceremony itself, women are asked to wear long ball gowns, but to avoid white, all black, all pink and gold, while men are encouraged to think “Oscars red carpet”.

The 350-person guest list includes celebrities and social media influencers, including American reality star Cynthia Bailey and body-positive model Margie Plus. Oscar winner and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow may also attend: she called Verrett a “soul brother” and he and Martha Louise vacationed with the actress in the Hamptons in 2019.

Notably absent is 27-year-old Marius Borg Høiby, Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s son from a previous relationship, who was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of physically assaulting a woman and vandalizing her apartment. He has admitted to being “in a stupor of alcohol and cocaine.”

Swedish Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Carl Philip are confirmed to attend the wedding, along with Prince Constantijn and Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands, but many others are staying away. Isaksen speculated that foreign royals “are not so keen to be part of this circus”.

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But with such a colorful couple now at the heart of the establishment, this lavish wedding is just the beginning of a dangerous tightrope act for the Norwegian royal family. A recent poll found that 36 percent of the public has viewed them more negatively in the past year. The madman and the shaman could reduce a stately institution to a clown car.

The Telegraph, London