Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness might have boycotted the event, but guests at the garden party for Prince Charles in Hillsborough Castle, Co Down, yesterday didn't let Sinn Fein's absence spoil their afternoon.
About 2,500 people attended the party hosted by the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam. In summer dresses and smart suits, the great and the good mingled in the grounds, listening to music from the RUC Band and the Kiss the Blarney folk group, among others.
The Youth Jazz Orchestra was there, too, performing music from the award-winning film, The Full Monty. On entering Hillsborough Castle, the prince planted a strawberry tree in remembrance of those killed during the Troubles.
He was helped by two women who lost their children in the conflict. Ms Pat Campbell's son, Philip (28), was shot by loyalists at a fish-and-chip shop, and Ms Meryl Eakin's eight-year-old daughter, Catherine, was killed by an IRA bomb.
Among the guests were Mr Gary McMichael and Mr David Adams of the Ulster Democratic Party, the UDA's political wing. The focus of the garden party was an exhibition tent containing a history of health care over 50 years.
Among the items on show was an operating table from the Royal Victoria Hospital and a collection of old nursing uniforms. Two old ambulances were also on display farther down the garden.
Prince Charles chatted to retired and long-serving health service staff and former patients who had undergone heart transplants, including seven-year-old Jonathon Shaw.
He also presented five Northerners with MBEs and awarded an honorary OBE to an Irish doctor, Cecil Stewart, who founded the leading Sandown nursing group in the North.
The garden party was the culmination of the prince's two-day tour. Earlier, he visited the Northern Ireland Hospice on Somerton Road in north Belfast where he talked to staff and looked in on an informal lunch with day-patients. He also met British servicemen and women at RAF Aldergrove on his first visit to the North this year.