Princess Diana had a very different secret 'spare' wedding dress which she rejected
Princess Diana had a backup wedding dress made in case her dress design was ever leaked to the press.
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Princess Diana’s wedding dress is one of the most iconic gowns of all time but it has now emerged that she could have worn a different garment on the big day.
A spare dress was created for the former Princess of Wales in case the original design was ever leaked to the press.
Designer Elizabeth Emanuel told Hello! that “fortunately” the “spare wedding gown”, which was notably different from the one the late Princess wore, never had to be used.
The second dress was made out of pale ivory silk taffeta adorned with embroidered scalloped details on the hem and sleeves with small, delicate pearls sewn into the bodice.
Other than the big skirt, the backup was completely different from the garment the former Princess of Wales donned on her big day although there were a few similarities.
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For example, it had a v-neck, although the ruffle was more understated, the sleeves were three-quarter length albeit less poofy and it had a wide princess skirt.
The 70-year-old said: "People always ask you what it was like. It was similar in certain respects and both had the big skirt, but everything else was different.”
Speaking on what would have been Diana and King Charles’s 42nd wedding anniversary, Ms Emanuel revealed that the second bridal gown disappeared.
She continued: “It was really just a backup to the original and I don't know where it went. It just disappeared.”
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Diana asked the fashion designer, who created the garment with her ex-husband David, and her staff to keep the details of the dress “very, very secret” and Ms Emanuel and her team did just that.
In fact, it’s no surprise that the original design never got out as Ms Emanuel and her staff kept it quite literally under lock and key. They even put decoys in their bins as people combed through them, looking for clues.
She explained: “It was stored every night in a metal cabinet guarded by two guards, Jim and Bert.
“So there was somebody there 24 hours a day and we put shutters on all our windows, and we put false colour threads in the rubbish bins because people were going through our bins."
The two wedding dress designs were not all Ms Emanuel made for the then-future Queen. She also made Diana a bright pink dress to wear to the wedding ball held before the big day at Buckingham Palace.
The then 20-year-old Diana opted to wear something pink instead of a classic white garment because she wanted to bring a “shock factor”.
The mermaid-style fuschia gown had a figure-hugging silhouette with three-quarter length sleeves and a low v-neck with ruffle trim.
She continued: “The fabric was a rich silk taffeta in shocking pink – a sexy little number and one that was certain to attract attention! It had a low plunge neckline and was slashed to the knee… She looked stunning!"