Two Dresses and Two Bouquets: Unexpected Facts About Diana’s Marriage to Prince Charles

When choosing shoes for a wedding dress, Diana had a hard time. The fact is that Prince Charles was only a few centimeters taller than her, and it was necessary to keep up appearances and not make the bride grow taller. The eminent designer Clive Shilton has achieved this.

The specialist and Diana argued over the design of the shoe for several months. And the result was totally worth it! The shoes were adorned with 500 sequins and a hundred small beads.

An interesting story happened with the bouquet. At the Queen’s current wedding in 1947, the bride’s bouquet disappeared in the middle of the ceremony. At an ordinary wedding, everyone would have given up, but Elizabeth’s guests got together on another day for a special photo shoot! Since then, at all royal weddings, two bouquets are prepared at once.

Diana had a beautiful bouquet of lilies, orchids and gardenias. More precisely, two bouquets, but the second was not useful.

Let’s start with the fact that two dresses were prepared for the wedding instead of one. No, Diana was not going to change in the middle of the ceremony or use a second outfit in any other way. The designers, Elizabeth and David Emanuel, feared something might happen to the main dress and prepared a spare. It was far from being so fancy – what to say, the princess didn’t even see it and didn’t try it on!

The second dress was also necessary to ensure that no one received photos of the real one – and everyone was surprised. It is known that the spare outfit was not finished – the authors simply did not have enough time. But since the dress ended up not being useful, that’s fine.

According to a well-known wedding tradition in Europe, Diana put on something old on her important day (Queen Mary lace on the veil), something new (silk on the dress), something borrowed (the 18th century Spencer family tiara) and something blue (a small blue bow sewn to the dress).

Diana tried on the dress about 15 times before the wedding. During this time, his height decreased by almost 14 centimeters! The designers had to call her Debra so no one would guess who they were talking about.

The train of the princess dress was breathtaking – and still takes your breath away just looking at it! Before this marriage, the maximum length of the train was just under seven meters. The train of Diana’s dress is over 8 meters long! The designers were very afraid that they would not be on time with the decorations, because thousands of beads had to be sewn onto the fabric, but of course they managed to do it.

Where did the dress go after the wedding? It is known that Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, kept it for many years. He showed it at the family estate twice a year.

But Diana imagined a different fate for the dress. She asked to pass it on to her sons William and Harry when the youngest turns 30. After September 15, 2014, the dress became part of their personal collection and was never shown again.