Royals' Wedding Dresses

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Royal Wedding Dresses
By popular demand: post your thoughts on royal brides' wedding dresses here.
Most flattering
Most appropriate
Best tiara
Most unflattering
Most inappropriate
Worst tiara

Following on from Harriet Sperling's wedding today. What are your thoughts?

You should have your thread moved to style & beauty.

I liked the lace overlay on her dress but thought it was a bit too high neck imho.

Most flattering - Kate/Princess Margaret
Most appropriate - late Queen/Beatrice
Best tiara - Eugenie
Most unflattering - Meghan/Zara
Most inappropriate - not sure anyone got it badly wrong
Worst tiara - Sophie

Harriet S - looked lovely but neck v v high and she looked like she had quite a long neck to start with! Not sure about the square neck shape under the overlay. It was ok. I actually think with a second wedding you have more of a licence to go a bit off piste and not stick to trad. But they looked very happy and relaxed so all power to them!

Kate’s by far was the best but she has a great figure - a similar dress on me or most others wouldn’t look good. My mum sent me pictures of our current queen’s dress and coat before i remarried saying how nice it was, i ignored her and boat a proper dress, i didn’t have one first time around and thought why not!

Hard to pick a favourite because they were of their time, Princess Anne’s stood out as being very stylish at the time.

I hate bare shoulders in a wedding dress so I wasn’t keen on Meghan’s. I think it was so close to being lovely and for various reasons missed the mark. Her tiara was fabulous though.

Lady Sarah Chatto (Princess Margaret's daughter) had the most stylish wedding dress. It's over 30 years ago but could be worn by a bride today. Loved her bridesmaids' dresses too.

@itsanamething she is still stylish - must be the genes!

I always thought as wedding dresses go, Fergie looked way better than Diana….

I actually loved Diana’s dress, it was a fairytale dream. But she looked pale and drawn on the day, she’d lost so much weight that she was drowned by it.

Fergie’s was a much better fit and she looked great, but it’s a very dated style and more “ordinary” somehow.

If we’re extending the discussion to hairstyles, Diana dreadful, Fergie meh. Catherine’s beautiful and elegant, Meghan’s fine but too self consciously messy.

Oh I love a royal wedding for precisely this reason! But I don't think anyone has necessarily got it wrong per day. I loved the simplicity of Meghan's dress. I think the only one I'm not a fan of is princess Di.

@WhyamIinahandcartandwherearewegoing I agree. Fergie’s dress was much nicer. It had primrose embroidery which I loved.

Diana’s was a weird dingy not white not cream colour and the train was ridiculous and the extreme length was a key part of the whole dress getting so crumpled in the carriage. Plus I think she would have done better to go with a more classic style instead of something which was on trend at the time and likely to date badly.

I’m old enough to have watched both these weddings live and Diana’s was definitely a mass disappointment with everyone I knew at the time.

Didn’t like MM’s dress at all. It looked like she was wrapped in an over starched sheet.

According to various writers MM had wanted to wear a much more revealing one but the Queen said no so I presume the sheet was a compromise.

Camilla’s duck egg coat dress was lovely, I even liked her hat and I’m not a hat fan. I think this is the best I have ever seen her look.

Loved Kate’s dress. The perfect combination of style and tradition.

I loved Lady Helen Taylor’s wedding dress.

I loved Zara’s dress, and also Fergies. I agree the latter is very dated now. Hated Diana’s dress which swamped her and was just a frightful over the top disaster. It didn’t suit her or play to her best features at all.

Meghans dress did look like an over starched sheet and I didn’t like it. The best were Eugenie’s and Beatrice’s dress in more recent times. Eugenie looked fantastic. I didn’t like Harriet dress at all. Honestly can’t understand why she went for it. Far too much lace, didn’t like the neck and the veil was far too long. Tiara looked odd too.

I also didn’t like Kate’s dress at all.
pointy breasts and far too much lace.

I really really did not like Diana, Sarah or Kate’s. Pippa really outshone the bride on the day and her dress was much, much nicer. I liked Meghan’s but there were issues with the fit. I liked the boat neck but the waist fit was off.

Princess Margaret’s dress is my all time favourite.
I don’t think any royal bride has ever got it wrong, how can you say that?
I liked Diana’s wedding dress it was fitting at the time.
Everyone has their own preference.
I really like how royal bridesmaids usually wear cream and stick to erring on the traditional side.
I hate to see bridesmaids in cheap, ill fitting dresses and I’ve unfortunately seen many in my time. One of the reasons it’s better to stick to tradition and have children or teenagers as bridesmaids and not older, fat women. Sorry but it’s true.

I loved Beatrice's dress, with sleeves added to a dress of Queen Elizabeth. I loved her tiara too but actually feel it didn't go with the dress. Eugenie's was nice but the shoulder detail was a bit neither here nor there

I didn't feel Meghan's veil was a great match for her dress.

I loved Kate's gown

I really liked Meghan's. The simplicity was very elegant.

Liked Kate's too (and Pippa's if we are allowed to sneak in some royal adjacent) but then I had a lot of lace myself so I am a fan of it.

Also liked whichever one out of B and E, can't ever recall which is which, wore one of her grandmother's old dresses.

Loved Camilla, Beatrice, Sarah Chatto, QEII, Duchess of Kent - all perfect for them.
Eugenie definitely had the best tiara - I love emeralds.

Like everyone else, I was disappointed with Diana's dress and how we all thought it was crumpled when she got out of the carriage. But a few years ago I saw it on display at an exhibition at KP and it was truly beautiful...... properly lit, with the train fully extended, and no creases! Unfortunately, on the actual day they hadn't thought through how she would travel and it also swamped Diana, so that the dress "wore" her, rather than the other way around.

I loved Diana’s dress. I was a 9 year old ‘tomboy’, never wore dresses and thought I dreamt of being in the army covered in mud and doing assault courses. I remember sitting behind our sofa and peeking at the royal wedding pretending not to be interested whilst my mum and sisters lapped it up. I then sneaked all of the newspaper wedding supplements up to my bedroom and pored over them. It’s the first time I remember being interested in maybe one day being a wearing a dress. It’s such a strong memory.

Otherwise I thought Fergies dress was tacky (with the S&A embroidery) and a bit boring. But it was in the tackiest half of the 80s. There was something a bit off about Kate’s but I don’t know what, Meghan’s was more my style but it didn’t seem to fit well.

Favourite overall was Beatrice. That was stunning.

I really like Harriet’s too.

I found Meghan's and Sophie's dresses very underwhelming, neither were ugly but with their money and resources they could have done so much better. Both poorly fitted, Meghan's appeared to boxy and Sophie's was too big (maybe she shed a few pounds from wedding nerves/stress). Also, Sophie's tiara looked like it was cobbled together. I quite liked their veils though. They had to tread a fine line though as Meghan probably didnt want to look like she was copying Kate, and I imagine Sophie was trying to distance herself from those unfavourable Diana comparisons. Maybe why they kept it more simpler.

Catherine's dress was nice but I have never quite understood why people fawned over it so much.

Loved Beatrice's and Zara's.

Beatrice was my favourite bride - the dress suited her completely. With Kate’s figure I would have worn something much more stylish - it just seemed a bit dated to me. I preferred Pippa’s bridesmaid dress.

Meghan’s dress was stunning but not very well tailored to her. I love a boat neck and clean simple lines. Actually if I had to swap wardrobes with any royal it would be Meghan- her clothes are generally very tasteful and simple but she should get them altered to fit her properly.

harriet looked beautiful. I didn’t like the lace until I realised it was a removable shrug. I think the dress was lovely without the lacy bit. And her figure is incredible so she can pull it off.

I too adored Diana’s dress and thought it was exactly what a fairytale princess should look like. I have really strong memories of Sarah being criticised for being chubby back in the day but she looks lovely and slim in old photos.

I remember thinking exactly that

she also had really bold colours in her bouquet which is relatively rare

I thought Meghan’s dress was lovely, albeit badly fitted to her. I didn’t like her evening dress at all.

I’ve never understood the love for Kate’s dress, while I understand it had to conform in many ways, I still think it wasn’t great, and the pointy breasts just made it look weird.

Beatrice’s was lovely and really suited her. I also liked Eugenie’s.

Diana’s was an utter abomination.

That was my thought too, @Miranda65. Diana’s dress didn’t photograph well and the creases were a distraction when she first appeared, but as she entered St Paul’s under the lights all the embellishments on her gown twinkled and it looked magnificent. The creators and seamstresses would been working on it in enhanced light, in daylight it lost its magic.