Everything You Need to Know About Princess Diana's Wedding Gown

Diana tapped British designers David and Elizabeth Emanuel to design her wedding gown. According to Tatler, Diana called up the Emanuels like any other potential client, asking simply if they'd do her the honor of making her wedding dress. Unlike today's royal wedding design process, which entails countless design houses vying for the chance to design for a royal via submitted sketches, vetting processes, and guidance from Her Majesty the Queen, this selection process seemed infinitely simpler and far more standard.

The relationship with the designers started prior to Diana's engagement to Charles. She'd turned to the Emanuels for three to four evening gowns for key occasions, which had turned heads and established her as a style icon, according to the designer. "The first time the public saw her in one of my gowns they were quite shocked. As a kindergarten teacher, people were used to seeing her in pretty blouses and pleated skirts. Then she got out of the limousine in a taffeta Emanuel gown and that’s when everybody said ‘oh my goodness, she looks like a movie star.'" That level of trust led Diana to entrust the label with the design of her wedding dress, which David Emanuel has dubbed "the greatest job of his career" in interviews since.

According to Hello! magazine, Diana's bridal fittings were private, save for her and the design team. When deciding on the sketch and silhouette, she asked to bring one single guest—her mother—contrary to the large entourages typically expected of aristocrats and royals.

And when it came to classic bridal traditions, Diana abided by them all. She had something old, a square of Carrickmacross lace that once belonged to Queen Mary. Per Town & Country, the square of fabric was either found in a bag of scraps or was a donation from the Royal School of Needlework. The rest of the lace appliqués on the gown were cut from antique lace specially spun at a British silk farm. Another something old (and her something borrowed) was the Spencer family tiara, an 18th-century heirloom on loan from her own family. This was both a traditional and a daring decision, given that Diana most likely could have loaned a tiara from the Crown Jewels instead.

While Brits tend to include a "sixpence in their shoe" for good luck, Diana took the inclusion of a good luck trinket to the next level. The Emanuels attached an 18-carat gold, horseshoe-shaped trinket studded with white diamonds to the gown's label as a token of good fortune.

While much of Diana's bridal look was new, including her shoes, there was a petite blue bow sewn into the interior of the gown's waistband as her "something blue."

In 2005, an auction house claimed to have a duplicate copy of Diana's original gown, according to CBS News. Upon speculation, the Emanuels insisted that they never created a second version of the dress, but did reveal that they had designed an alternate dress for Diana, one with a more pronounced V-neckline and no lace.

Media were itching to get a sneak peek of the gown's design, and the Emanuels went to every length to keep the sketch, silhouette, and details of the design a secret until the wedding day. According to MetDaan, they even installed a safe in their studio to store the designs and fabric swatches. “It sounds a bit over-the-top, but it really did seem like people would go to any lengths to find out what the dress looked like,” Elizabeth explained.

Concerned the original dress design would leak to the press and be rendered useless, the second dress was meant to be worn only in the event that the press got wind of the first. The second dress, however, mysteriously vanished from the studio; many guessed that the gown up for auction was actually the stolen alternate gown, rather than a copy of the gown Diana wore down the aisle.

Though one typically associates being sewn into one's wedding dress as a solution to a wardrobe malfunction, for Diana, it was purely a fit issue—in that she arrived on her wedding day even smaller than she was in her final fittings. And while most brides tend to lose weight leading up to their wedding days, Diana lost a considerable amount more, inches included. Elizabeth Emanuel later told People that Diana ended up with a 23-inch waist, from a 26-to-27-inch waist when they first started the design process. As a result, the princess-to-be needed to be sewn into her gown the morning of her wedding day to ensure the perfect fit.

In addition to a 25-foot long train and 153-yard veil, Diana's wedding gown featured 10,000 mother-of-pearl sequins and pearls, not including the 542 sequins and 132 pearls on her custom set of slippers. The gown, unprecedented in its level of detail and grandeur, would retail for an approximate £90,000 at the time of its creation in 1981, which is equivalent to about £347,260.69 today. In U.S. dollars, that converts to about $448,572.26.