{"id":1162,"date":"2011-05-20T18:14:30","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T12:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/?p=1162"},"modified":"2011-05-20T18:14:30","modified_gmt":"2011-05-20T12:14:30","slug":"bhutans-31-year-old-king-to-marry-in-october-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/20\/bhutans-31-year-old-king-to-marry-in-october-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Bhutan’s 31-year-old king to marry in October 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Friday, 20th May, 2011: This morning, I attended the opening of the 7th session of the Parliament and to everyones’ surprise (a pleasant one), His Majesty King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck<\/a>, possessing a warm smile, announced his wedding with Jetsun Pema. I almost clapped. The royal wedding is to be held in October this year. It is a joyous day in Bhutan. A welcome news indeed!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Bhutan-King-and-Queen-Jigme-Khesar-and-Jetsun-Pema.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Courtesy: http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/KingJigmeKhesar<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Her-Majesty-the-Queen-Ashi-Jetsun-Pema.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Ashi Jetsun Pema (Pic source: Bhutan Observer)<\/p>\n

Fri\u00a0May\u00a020, by Adam Plowright\u00a0(AFP<\/strong>)<\/p>\n

\n

NEW DELHI (AFP) \u2013 The 31-year-old king of Bhutan, an Oxford-educated bachelor crowned in the remote Himalayan country in 2008, set up another royal wedding on Friday by announcing his engagement.<\/p>\n

Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, who helped usher in democracy in the Buddhist nation, revealed his intention to marry 20-year-old student Jetsun Pema during an address to parliament.<\/p>\n

“As king, it is now time for me to marry. After much thought I have decided that the wedding shall be later this year,” he announced, according to a copy of the speech sent to AFP.<\/p>\n

“While she is young, she is warm and kind in heart and character,” he said of the future queen, who appeared in traditional Bhutanese dress in a joint picture released of the couple.<\/p>\n

The announcement clears the way for another wedding in a year of royal nuptials that has already seen Britain’s Prince William marry Kate Middleton in London in an event that captured the world’s attention.<\/p>\n

In July, Prince Albert II of Monaco is to wed his swimming champion fiancee Charlene Wittstock.<\/p>\n

“There will be a celebration, but His Majesty has requested that the government not make big plans and big celebrations,” Dorji Wangchuck, from the royal press office, told AFP by telephone from the capital Thimphu.<\/p>\n

“It is because of the lack of resources (in Bhutan) and secondly to make the celebrations more intimate and personal,” he said, adding that the wedding was scheduled for October.<\/p>\n

The king has known Pema, a student from Thimphu, “for quite some time”, he said, adding that she had already begun to accompany the monarch on trips around the country.<\/p>\n

Educated in India and Britain, where she attended Regents College in central London, Pema likes fine arts, painting and basketball, according to the official biography released by the king’s office.<\/p>\n

Bhutan is one of the most remote and reclusive places on Earth, sandwiched between India and China.<\/p>\n

It had no roads or currency until the 1960s, allowed television only in 1999 and continues to resist the temptation of allowing mass tourism — preferring instead to allow access to only small organised groups of well-heeled visitors.<\/p>\n

It is also famed for the invention of Gross National Happiness, which is used to measure the progress and well-being of its citizens instead of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) other countries use to measure wealth.<\/p>\n

Wangchuck, who can take multiple wives under the Bhutanese legal system, is widely revered by his subjects.<\/p>\n

“It required an awful amount of restraint in parliament not to explode into spontaneous joy,” the leader of the opposition in parliament, Tshering Tobgay, told AFP after hearing the news.<\/p>\n

“Everybody will be overjoyed and will feel like celebrating, but it’s not our custom to go into the streets and make public our emotions. This is not Bhutanese.”<\/p>\n

Tobgay described the king’s fiancee as “very approachable”, “very friendly” and “beautiful”.<\/p>\n

The relationship “wasn’t completely public, but it wasn’t obviously hidden either”, he said.<\/p>\n

The king was crowned in 2008 following the abdication of his father, who began the process of introducing democracy to the staunchly traditional and insular nation in 2001.<\/p>\n

Former king Jigme Singye Wangchuck stepped down saying he wanted the shift to democracy to be matched with a change of face in the white-walled royal palace that overlooks Thimphu.<\/p>\n

In his first speech after his coronation, the current king pledged to shield Bhutan from the negative forces of globalisation.<\/p>\n

“My deepest concern is that as the world changes we may lose these fundamental values on which we rest our character as a nation and people,” he said at the time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Courtesy: Yahoo news and AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday, 20th May, 2011: This morning, I attended the opening of the 7th session of the Parliament and to everyones’ surprise (a pleasant one), His Majesty King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, possessing a warm smile, announced his wedding with Jetsun Pema. I almost clapped. The royal wedding is to be held in October this year. … Continue reading Bhutan’s 31-year-old king to marry in October 2011<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[205,210,214,579,737,751,1071,1157,1225,1413],"class_list":["post-1162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monarch","category-news","tag-bhutan","tag-bhutan-king","tag-bhutan-royal-family","tag-gnh","tag-kate-middleton","tag-king-jigme","tag-oxford","tag-prince-william","tag-royal-wedding","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}