Concord’s Janet Ulbrich nearly had to report the royal family to an etiquette enforcer who has been dead for more than five decades. But then she wound up with a super-cute keepsake.
A two-sentence teaser for an upcoming BBC series? No – although it probably should be. Instead it’s the real-life tale of Ulbrich, who crafted a personalized bib for the royal baby and was giving up hope of receiving a response after nearly two months when a mysterious package arrived in the mail.
Containing a letter from Kensington Palace – and the bib.
“I sent it sometime near the beginning of August, and enclosed with it a note and a card my daughter had made with a picture of my grandkids, and I was awaiting a response,” Ulbrich said. “It was getting to the point where I was kind of joking with a friend that I was going to have to report the Royal Family to Emily Post. But (Sept. 20) it came in the mail, but it was a package. I was thinking, why am I getting a package? I should be getting an envelope. So I opened it up, and there was the bib.”
So what was Ulbrich’s mistake? Failing to make a bib regal enough to wipe royal spittle from Prince George’s tiny face? Alas, no; she just accidentally made herself sound like some sort of wildly successful American bib factory.
“There was a letter enclosed inside, and it explained that when I sent the bib, I stuck one of my business cards on it, and I guess it looked like I was a big deal business. And they can’t accept gifts like that,” Ulbrich said. “So I got it back.”
The letter is all sorts of British and official – reference is made to Ulbrich as an “organisation,” and there’s the hope that she doesn’t take “offence” to the return. Also, Ulbrich is now one of only one people we’ve ever spoken to who can claim she’s essentially been told “good day” by a crown not hand-folded at Burger King or Buffalo Wild Wings.
“I know Their Royal Highnesses appreciate your thoughtful offer of a gift and would have me send you their best wishes,” the letter states.
It is signed by a Mrs. Gemma Kaza, and not Pippa, as we had hoped. But mostly just so we could write the word Pippa (we weren’t to be denied). The correspondence is resplendent with the royal seal from Kensington Palace and is labeled private and confidential. No mention was made of whether the note would self-destruct anytime soon.
Alas, the return should not be viewed as an unhappy ending. On the contrary, Ulbrich was quickly able to turn her frown upside down when she realized she now had one of the most exciting wall decorations in all of Concord.
“At first I was kind of upset about it, but then I thought, this is even better – now I have a royal letter, an acknowledgment, and I have the actual bib,” Ulbrich said. “So I’m going to shadow box it and put it up in my sewing room.”
The bib deserves wall space somewhere after the time and effort Ulbrich put into it. The sewing itself only takes a couple of hours, she said, but she first had to design the bib on the computer and transfer it to her embroidery machine. And that doesn’t account for the research required to include the baby’s full name, weight and length, the latter tidbit of which was so secure even Agent 007 would have had a hard time cracking the case.
“I tried finding the length from all kinds of places,” Ulbrich said. “Here in the states, that’s one of the stats everyone lists. I don’t know if it’s different over there.”
As any good British inspector would, Ulbrich had troops on the ground in England to aid in her research. Her friend, Nancy, who lives across the pond, was able to track down the proper address, because she “supposedly knows someone in the royal family, maybe the housekeeper,” Ulbrich said. Nancy was also able to relay intel in regards to the baby’s name before the news was broken stateside.
Ulbrich was most nervous about embroidering the proper time of birth on the bib, though she believes she was ultimately able to track down the correct hour and minute.
Ulbrich is no stranger to creating personalized bibs, having made many for the pregnancy center, Care Net. She was also no stranger to the baby watch, as her daughter-in-law was due at almost the same time as Kate.
“It was kind of like, who is going to be first?” Ulbrich said. Her daughter-in-law won the unofficial race by eight days.
All’s well that ends well, though – Ulbrich’s daughter-in-law is raising a healthy baby, as is Kate, and Ulbrich wound up with the ultimate talking point at any dinner parties she plans to hold in the future.
“I think it’s kind of fun that I have it back again. It’s kind of an unusual circumstance,” Ulbrich said. “The letter was on the royal Kensington Palace letterhead and said personal and confidential; I felt like a big cheese for about one minute. But that was part of my impetus in sending this; I knew I would get a response, and I could frame it. But now I can frame it with the bib.”
