Princess Diana's wedding dress designer has opened up on how she really felt about the giant frilly gown as the late royal prepared to tie the knot to Prince Charles on her big day in 1981.
The bold and statement-making dress was designed by husband and wife duo Elizabeth and David Emanuel.
Becoming one of the most iconic frocks in royal history, Lady Diana Spencer's moment was hugely overshadowed by the incredibly dramatic pouffy fabric she was wearing.
But while all eyes were on the princess finally marrying her prince, the Emanuels were left utterly "horrified" by the final dress design in theflesh.
Diana was only 20 years old when she walked down the aisle to meet the future king of England, with a whopping 12 year age gap between them.
When she stepped out of her carriage at St Paul's Cathedral on July 29, 1981, there was a collective gasp as royal fans drank in the swathes of ivory silk taffeta and lace.
The dress was reported to have cost nearly £9,000 when David and Elizabeth finished their design, ensuring the final look had remained top secret up until that very moment.
The gown also featured more than 10,000 pearls and fabrics such as tulle and netting in the sleeves and veil, with a 25-foot long silk train.
Unfortunately, so much detail and different styles meant the fabrics had become incredibly creased during Diana's journey to the cathedral.
"We did know it would crease a bit but when I saw her arrive at St Paul's and we saw the creasing I actually felt faint," Elizabeth recalled during an appearance on ITV's Invitation to the Royal Wedding in 2018.
"I was horrified, really, because it was quite a lot of creasing," the designer went on. "It was a lot more than we thought."
While the couple had been as prepared as they could be for the most-watched television event in history, doing a dress rehearsal before the ceremony, they'd used different materials.
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David has since told People magazine that the successful designers had been insistent on keeping the gown as a surprise up until the day.
He and Elizabeth also made a back-up just in case anything went wrong, but never asked the late princess, who tragically died in a car crash in 1997, to try it on.
"We wanted to make sure that we had something there; it was for our own peace of mind, really," David explained, who had also revealed during another interview that the Princess of Wales personally called him to thank him for the wedding dress before going on her honeymoon.
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