Princess Diana’s wedding dress designer, Elizabeth Emmanuel, exclusively revealed on the ITV documentary Invitation To A Royal Wedding some of the wedding’s best-kept secrets. Elizabeth worked with her now ex-husband David on Princess Diana’s wedding gown and explained that it was very hard to keep the dress “a secret”.
Get the latest royal news straight to your phone by joining our Whatsapp community!
The fashion designer explained that a lot of journalists would go through the rubbish to see what colour the dress was going to be.
She said: “I kept every scrap and we had to be very careful not to let any scraps fall on the floor because we didn’t want them to end up in the rubbish. Every thread was important as far as I was concerned.”
The designer also revealed that she was “horrified” when she saw Diana at St Paul’s Cathedral due to the state of the gown after riding the carriage.
She said: “We did know it would crease a bit but when I saw Diana arrive at St Paul’s and we saw the creases I actually felt faint.
“I was horrified really because there was quite a lot of creasing there and she’s been in this little carriage with her father whose quite tall and she was all crunched in”.
Chloe Savage from Chloe Savage Embroidery, who worked on Kate and Meghan’s wedding gowns, opined that although it was “a beautiful dress, someone should have warned them that it was going to be stuffed in the carriage”.
“It looked like it needed to be pressed. You could have brushed it over before she walked down the aisle. It would have taken 10 minutes and all those creases would have dropped,” she told Insider.
Don’t miss…
Kate may have ‘delicious’ breakfast food every day to lose weight[DIET]
Kate’s gesture to Prince William put her ‘in the role of control'[BODY LANGUAGE]
Danish royals pose for portrait in ‘midlife crisis’ shoes, claim fans [STYLE]
The expert added: “It was a beautiful dress, very ’80s, very her. But if you look at it you go, ‘Oh my god, is it that creased?’ It would’ve never occurred to anyone that it would have screwed up that badly.”
However, Emanuel revealed that although Princess Diana’s ride to the cathedral was rehearsed in advance, an unexpected incident on the day was what ruined the dress.
In the book HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style, the designer said that they expected Diana to ride in the carriage by herself but her father, Earl Spencer, decided to join at the last minute.
As there was less room for the dress, they folded it “like you would fold a bed sheet”, but that wasn’t enough to prevent the creasing.
Despite everything, the designer explained that the whole team went back to their studio in Mayfair after the wedding breakfast to celebrate and have “a glass of champagne”.
All of the sudden, they received a call, and “it was Diana”. “She said ‘I just wanted to say thank you so much for the gown. I loved it. Prince Charles loved it. All the family loved it.
“It couldn’t have been more special for me to hear from the client. When you design for a bride you want her to be happy.
“As long as the bride is happy that is all that matters. The fact she took the time before she went off on honeymoon… that’s genuine kindness,” she added.
The late Princess of Wales knew her dress was hard to handle, so she told her bridesmaid to “do your best” before entering the church.
Prince Charles’s goddaughter, India Hicks, told Harper’s Bazaar that when Diana entered St Paul’s, she said: “Do your best.”
She explained: “We knew what that meant: If we pulled too much, straightening the material, her tiara and veil would slip. But if we didn’t pull enough, the effect of the train would be lost.”
Source: Read Full Article