A FORMER Tasmanian schoolgirl who wanted to grow up to be a princess realised her dream yesterday.

Wearing an ivory satin dress with a 6m (20ft) train, Mary Elizabeth Donaldson, 32, a former Sydney estate agent and the daughter of an Oxford mathematics professor, became the first Australian in line to be a queen.

As crowds of wellwishers cheered and waved Danish and Australian flags, Miss Donaldson married Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark in Copenhagen Cathedral, transforming herself into Crown Princess Mary, in line to be the queen of Denmark, Greenland and the Faroes when her husband succeeds the reigning Queen Margrethe.

She was given away by her father, John, who wore a kilt. The groom wore naval uniform.

As soon as Miss Donaldson said “I do” she joined one of Europe’s oldest royal families, which has ruled the tiny kingdom for more than 1,000 years. As they swapped rings — made of Greenland-mined gold — the Crown Prince wept.

Among the 800 guests were the Kings of Sweden, Norway and the Belgians, the Queens of the Netherlands and Spain, the Crown Prince of Japan and a sprinkling of European crown princes and princesses. Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, a distant cousin of the groom, and his wife the Countess, represented the House of Windsor.

The setting, the austere Cathedral of Our Lady, was built 175 years ago to replace a church destroyed during the British bombardment of Copenhagen during the Napoleonic Wars.

After the hour-long ceremony, Crown Prince Frederick, 35, and his bride rode through Copenhagen’s old town in an horse-drawn open carriage. A third of Denmark’s police stood guard, Copenhagen air space was closed and public flower-throwing was banned in case a bomb was mistaken for a bouquet.

In the screaming crowds, Anne Carpenter, 51, an Australian who travelled to Denmark just to watch the wedding, said: “I love fairy tales, and this is a royal fairy tale. It’s such a lovely story, he seems such a nice guy and she seems so naturally graceful and regal.”

The royal couple met at a reception at the Slip Inn in Sydney during the 2000 Olympics. Yesterday the Slip was hosting a wedding party, offering free Carlsberg lager to any Danes. Tasmania’s parliament flew Danish flags and the Crown Princess’s old school held a party with everyone wearing Viking hats.

The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, regretted that he could not attend but said yesterday: “I wish them well on behalf of all the Australian people. It’s obviously an occasion that does bring our two nations closer together.”

Crown Princess Mary explained in a feverish round of pre-marriage interviews that she was publicity-shy, but thought it had all been pre-ordained. “The way Frederik and I met — it took so many little things that had to fit together. There had to be something — supernatural? — that took charge. As if destiny is tapping me on the shoulder,” she said.

But it almost wasn’t to be. Denmark’s notoriously strict immigration rules had to be bent so that the Crown Prince could import a foreign bride.

The bride has done her bit to sustain the Royal Family’s popularity, taking deportment classes and quickly learning fluent Danish. She has also promised to do lots of charity work and produce lots of heirs.

In return, she will not have to worry about money. As a pre-wedding gift, the Danish parliament voted to increase Crown Prince Frederik’s civil-list pay from £360,000 a year to £1.3 million. Danish taxpayers spent £11 million doing up the dilapidated Amalienborg Palace to give them an official residence. The festivities themselves cost £13 million, the extravagance shocking many Danes at a time of cuts in social security and education.

Fortunately for Crown Princess Mary there is no tradition in Denmark, as there is in Britain, for the Crown Prince to marry a virgin. She recently shocked Danish royal-watchers when she revealed in a frank interview that she had a seven-year relationship with an Australian. But the Prince is apparently so confident in his marriage that he is prepared to bet half his kingdom on its success. Frederik is reported not to have registered a “marriage settlement”, meaning that in the case of divorce, his wife will have secured rights to half the kingdom.

But, unlike the Windsors, and despite living in a country with one of the world’s highest divorce rates, the boringly scandal-free Danish Royal Family has not had a divorce in the past 50 years.

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