Princess Diana's wedding champagne auctioned off

I really do love weddings, and I frequently like celebrity weddings because they are splashy and luxe, but I do not like Princess Diana and Prince Charles wedding stories. I genuinely don't understand the fascination with their wedding day. As I've already mentioned, I didn't like her dress, and I didn't think their cake looked nice or tasty, so you can guess that I rolled my eyes when I read this article:

A bottle of champagne from Britain's Prince Charles' wedding to Diana is expected to fetch £1,200 [roughly $2000 US] at auction. Princess Diana had given the 1961 vintage Dom Perignon to Brian Ames, manager of exclusive London store Harrods, as a 50th birthday present in 1988, seven years after she married the heir to the throne.


My own photo of the Moet and Chandon gift shop. The largest bottle (I believe a Nebuchadnezzar) was $2000. I'd much rather have the giant bottle than an old, potentially undrinkable bottle.

Its 1961 vintage was selected as it was the year of the bride's birth. James Grinter of auction house Reeman Dansie, said: "It is very rare to find a Royal Wedding bottle of 1961 Dom Perignon because it was a strictly limited release and even rarer to find it still sealed in its original box."

It is understood that just 99 bottles of the vintage - regarded as one of the finest ever produced - were shipped across from the France's Champagne region for the wedding. All are believed to have been consumed at the Buckingham Palace reception after the wedding, watched by an estimated 1,000 million people worldwide. [By 1,000 million do they mean a billion? Numbers aren't really my strong point, but that seems impossible somehow.]

A little research calls up the fact that many bottles of this vintage are worthless or sold only for collecting because they might have been stored improperly. A bottle in good condition can go for $1000US, so the Princess Diana factor adds at least $1000 to the value. The article doesn't state the condition of the bottle up for auction.

I love champagne, but $2000 for a bottle that I potentially can't drink? No thank you! Also, not to brag (okay, maybe a little) but earlier this year I visited Moet and Chandon in Epernay and it was worth the trip. If you love champagne as much as I do, you'll appreciate the chance to get tipsy before lunch in an incredibly beautiful French countryside.


-Kay

p.s. Just so you know, I'm a hypocrite. If someone offered me something that Lucille Ball had at her wedding, I would consider paying $2000 for it because I love her.