It looks like a fairy tale: a prince and lady-in-waiting meet each other fleetingly during the eleventh of the eleventh and a few years later the spark explodes during carnival. Everyone knows Prince Bas d’n Urste from Keiendonk (Megen) and his girlfriend Lorraine as a real carnival couple. “It went crazy. I never expected that we would be sitting here together five years later,” says Bas.
Eleven years ago, the couple met for the first time at the Prince’s Ball in Megen, where Prince Carnival was announced. “My father was prince in Keiendonk (Megen) 22 years ago, so I was also there every year,” says Bas Driessen (34). “Our city is not that big, so I knew all the women by now. When Lorraine came to the ball as a lady-in-waiting from an Osse carnival association, she immediately caught my attention.”
But she had no interest in him that evening. “I was in a relationship, but Bas liked me so much that I couldn’t get rid of him. When he asked for my number, I gave him the wrong one,” says Lorraine van den Bogaart with a laugh. Bas adds: “When I wanted to send a message, I found out that she had given a number with 9 instead of 8 digits. I thought: I have that again and so I gave up hope.”
“On the last night of Carnival he asked for a date.”
Six years later they meet again at the 11-11 ball in Macharen, a village between Oss and Megen. Bas had joined the council of eleven of Keiendonk and Lorraine trained the dance mariekes there. Lorraine: “We looked at each other and then I said to him: you don’t know who I am anymore, do you? But he immediately recognized me as the girl who gave him the wrong number.”
Meanwhile, 25-year-old Lorraine was single again and she liked Bas. But then he had a girlfriend. Because they had a good time together, they decided to keep in touch. When Bas’s relationship ended in the following months, the spark eventually flew between the two.
“On the last night of Carnival he asked for a date. He was quite drunk, so then I said: if you remember this tomorrow, we are in a relationship and if you don’t remember, then not,” she says laughing. “But luckily I still knew it,” Bas adds.
“Carnival was brought to us both from an early age.”
The couple has now been together for five years and many residents of Megen and Ossen see them as the carnival couple. But it is precisely during those days that the couple is not together much. “Carnival was brought to us both from an early age. We have been active in our own carnival associations since we were little, so we both have our obligations and traditions,” says Bas. “Still, I went to Oss for one day during the carnival and she came to me once.”
Now that he succeeds his father Ruud, who was prince in 2001, as prince for the first time, he has no time for his girlfriend. “That was still a point of discussion. Because I was asked to be the farmer’s bride and groom in Oss. I rejected that request, because otherwise we would not see each other at all this carnival,” says de Oss. Now Lorraine hoped that her prince will ask her to marry him this carnival. “That really completes our story,” she says.
