Royals' Wedding Dresses

[tarheelbaby]

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

She's the bride , it was her day , her choice , maybe she just wanted them 😂

I do remember reading that the dress was beautifully structured. So for example there was some padding around the hips to make the skirt stand out more & Catherine does sometimes wear dresses with peplums.

I loved Lady Sarah Chatto -which is surprisingly plain for my usual taste.
I also adore Princess Marina of Greece (Late Duchess of Kent) -her dress was threaded with silver and Princess Alice (Late Duchess of Gloucester) whose dress was pale pink.
Good pictures of theirs are hard to find -I’ll have a look on my books tomorrow.

But my favourites are Princess Alexandra (I’ve got a book entirely about her wedding-I’ll take some pictures of out it tomorrow) and Princess Stephanie of Luxembourg (who wore Elie Saab) whose dresses subscribe to the ‘you can never have too much lace and a long train is GOOD’ school,of dressmaking.

I also adore Princess Marina of Greece (Late Duchess of Kent) -her dress was threaded with silver and Princess Alice (Late Duchess of Gloucester) whose dress was pale pink. Good pictures of theirs are hard to find -I’ll have a look on my books tomorrow.

I posted a couple of pics of Marina earlier. Not very good quality; they seemed to be scanned from newspaper articles. She was beautiful and her dress was very well received at the time. (That wedding was probably the first meeting of Elizabeth and Philip, although neither of them apparently remembered it; Elizabeth was there as a bridesmaid and niece of the groom. Philip was there as a cousin of the bride.)

I couldn't find a good one of Alice. She was carrying a big bouquet which rather obscured the dress.

Another one for Princess Anne. She was stunning (and is still a striking looking woman). The sleeves on her dress were fabulous. She also wore the Queen Mary Fringe tiara which is beautiful.

I didn’t like Beatrice’s dress. Horrid puff sleeves and was far too little girly for a grown woman. Surely amongst the many fab dresses in the royal archives there was something nicer or something else could have been purchased even in covid? Thought the rather grand tiara looked wrong with it too.

It was the pointy boobs for me but also the cut, she has an amazing figure but the dress just looked unflattering for her great figure.

When you saw how well Pippa looked it was obvious they could have done better with Kate.

I loved Helen Taylor’s dress. Looking back I think princess Margaret’s was an absolute stunner, Princess Anne’s was beautiful too. Diana’s dress was completely her, I just remember thinking what’s up with her hair on the day. Sarah Chatto was lovely in every way except I don’t like laced up backs. Sophie’s was too big for her I think. Catherine’s I loved. I liked the idea of Meghan’s dress a lot, but it could have fit better, as could most of her clothes to be honest. I loved the diamond bandeau and the massive veil.

Yesterday’s dress missed the mark for me. Too much lace and something not quite right about the shape of the chest/neckline which gave pinafore dress vibes. My DD had a separate lace overlay bodice for church, but the lace was delicate and the cut was flattering, you wouldn’t have assumed it would be coming off for the party. The dress was equally beautiful with and without the lace.

I remember princess Anne's dress and all the tv gossip was about the amazing sleeves. The following day the papers and TV were full of wedding dress businesses who had had ladies up all night trying to reproduce Anne's dress but apparently the sleeves were almost immediately possible to replicate. I thought it was such a fantastic dress and so different for the times (early 70s).

impossible to replicate
Sorry!

I used her idea of deep/box pleats for my dress.

I really didn't like Harriet's dress. The high neck looked awful but she gets points for managing not to get it covered in makeup. If I worse that the top edges would've been stained in foundation in no time flat.

I love the pic of Sarah Chatto and her bridesmaids. At first I thought it bizarre to have them dressed to similarly to the bride but it grew on me quickly. It's really very elegant.

Yes to Kate and the cone shaped boobs, it ruined the whole look!

I agree about Meghan's dress: Could have been lovely but missed the mark. For me, it was because the fit was so bad. She had extra material around the torso but it was a shade tight on the hips. It needed to have much better tailoring on the top half and and be a little more forgiving on the bottom half. It should have had the most gorgeous shape like Pippa Middleton's bridesmaid dress, and it just didn't. How you can have a six-figure custom dress by Givenchy that's a bad fit, I'll never know, but it seems you can. I also wonder if it was just too plain. It looked severe, somehow. And the material looked stiff and thick. Maybe that's why it didn't skim her figure nicely like Pippa's bridesmaid dress.

Kate's was by far the best. A total dream.

Harriet's was severe and frumpy with the super-high neckline teamed with very long sleeves. The skirt was too straight. The neckline showing through the lace layer looked like a sun-top. Its square lines were at odds with the lace. Altogether a weird look.

Autumn's was gorgeous, and much nicer than Harriet's.

Eugenie's was my second-favourite after Kate's.

Beatrice's was a big fat nothing. Not a wedding dress at all.

Diana's was a complete frocky horror. I don't think I've ever seen such a horrible wedding dress. Even by the standards of the Eighties, it was a fright. And it absolutely drowned her.

Fergie's was beautiful.

The Queen's was OK. Pretty. Nothing to write home about.

Camilla's was perfect for a second wedding.

This is the best picture I've seen of Autumn's dress. So pretty.

Autumns dress is beautiful.

Yes.

I thought it was so sad that they split up and wished that they could have worked it out. They had a family, and they seemed good together. However, no good marriage ends in divorce, so I guess they must be better apart. Hopefully Peter has found a lifelong spouse in Harriet.

Apparently she has been in a new relationship for some time too.
Ive just been looking through a montage of photos of her. She’s such a beautiful vibrant woman. Always immaculately turned out and looks so happy. I wonder what went wrong.

Oh, Pippa did not outshine the bride and her dress wasn't nicer - imo, anyway! The dress looked nice from the back, but it had a cowl neck - ugh - and T-shirt style short sleeves. It was really nothing to look at from the front.

Cowl necks should stay on Eighties jumpers and never be seen again!

Pippa's wedding dress was only OK, imo. The severe, harsh chin-height top ruined it. She had this vast expanse of lace covering her from the end of one sleeve to the end of the other sleeve and from her chin down to the top of her bustier. The trouble is that the lace was thick, like a place mat. If the neckline had followed her collarbone, it would have been so much prettier. And together with the severe, Convent-like neckline, she had her hair up in a tight style. The whole look needed a soft touch, like her hair being in a half updo like Kate's, or a neckline that wasn't quite so high. I thought it all looked a little tomboy.

Yes, she did always look happy. I always thought they looked really good together.

They said they just grew apart - in other words, obviously we're not going to know the real reason.

Another perspective on the pointy boobs element of Kate’s dress: I thought it was the detail that made it visibly an Alexander McQueen dress. He loved armoured details for women to make them look strong and formidable. To my eyes, it looks like a rounded breastplate rather than pointy Madonna cone boobs

That’s really interesting, I didn’t know that. As a concept it’s fine but executed into what is essentially a romantic garment I don’t think it translated well.

I will say that in general royal bosoms are not well presented. I always felt the Queen’s could have been shifted up a notch or two.

Really interesting POV. I also think that she needed some serious structure up top to balance out the volume of the skirt. I adored the whole look

The Queen's was OK. Pretty. Nothing to write home about.

For its time, the late Queen's dress was really quite lavish - long full skirt, satin, embroidery, seed pearls - given that clothes rationing was in force. The govt. apparently allowed her 200 extra clothing coupons. An ordinary day dress, stockings and shoes was 18 coupons.

What do you think she should have worn?

(Meghan's dresses often seem to fit poorly around the waist and hips. I remember a turquoise Victoria Beckham which suited her very well but was spoiled by poor fit.)

I’ve often thought some of them need a bra intervention.

I didn’t like the pointy boobs thing on Kate’s dress.
I didn’t know what all the fuss was about Pippa’s bridesmaid dress.