Face to face with a modern icon

No, we're not talking Lady Gaga here. Instead, the modern icon to which I'm referring is THE dress of 2011, the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding gown.
 

Image via the Guardian

For those of you wishing to get up close and personal with the McQueen dress, it is being exhibited at Buckingham Palace as part of the venue's annual Summer Opening. As well as the dress, you can also see the veil, earrings, shoes, bouquet and cake from the event, plus the beautiful Cartier "Halo" tiara that Kate borrowed from the Queen.

The exhibition also features a five minute video of Sarah Burton, the McQueen designer, explaining how the dress was made and detailing the triumphs of engineering hidden beneeath the folds of silk gazar. Who would have thought, for example, that there was a special panel in the back to ensure that the train hung properly?

The dress will be on display until October 3rd and for more information visit www.royalcollection.org. But be quick - there has been an unprecedented demand for tickets and there is a strong chance they will sell out, such is the power of The Dress!

 - Helen

West Weddings on the Royal Wedding: the dress

Clearly, West Weddings has a hotline to McQueen. On Thursday we Tweeted that our prediction for the dress was "v neck, lace sleeves, tiara, slightly A line, veil that forms part of train". Well, four out five ain't bad.

Sarah Burton did us proud. The dress, with its lace bodice and applique skirt, was a beautiful creation involving British craftmanship at its best with all the materials, including the lace,  sourced from British factories. As Kate stepped out of the Rolls Royce, the world gave it a massive thumbs up.

 via the BBC

According to the BBC, a team of 30 embroiderers at the Royal School of Needlecraft worked for weeks on the delicate detailing on the bodice and skirt. These included a rose, shamrock, thistle and daffodil to represent the four nations of the United Kingdom. Embroiderers washed their hands every half an hour to ensure the thread stayed clean and the needles were also changed every three hours to keep them sharp.

Unlike other brides, Kate was somewhat bound by Royal protocol for what she could wear: the strapless dress that is so favoured by British brides today, for example, would not have been an option for a religious ceremony in Westminster Abbey attended by the Queen. Kate's dress sense has been criticised in the past for being too frumpy and "safe", and so the choice of McQueen to design her wedding dress was not necessarily what everyone would have predicted. But the collaboration worked: the simplicity of the dress allowed Kate's best features (her hair, her figure) to be framed to perfection, and the 2.7m train was dramatic enough to work in a venue the size of the Abbey whilst not overwhelming the bride.

Overall, the dress was a success because it is timeless and classic: you can imagine it looking as good in twenty years' time as it did last Friday, something which can't really be said for Diana's very of-its-era creation. Kate's dress was compared with Grace Kelly's gown for her 1956 marriage to Prince Ranier. Since Grace is the epitome of style and  elegance, and a fellow princess, I think the now Duchess of Cambridge would be pleased with this comparison.

Sarah Burton was also responsible for the dress worn by the Maid of Honour, Pippa Middleton, which instantly catapulted her into the global spotlight. Pippa's cowl necked, ivory crepe gown  trimmed with the same lace from the bride's dress showed off her enviable figure and instantly gave her a new nickname of "Your Royal Hotness". Never mind a bridesmaid dress, I know lots of people who would gladly wear that dress to get married in! In fact, I thought that perhaps Pippa's dress was what Kate would have chosen for herself if she had been a Bucklebury bride instead of a Royal one.

 Picture via Digital Spy

 Picture via the Mirror

Although lots of people have been commenting on it being bad etiquette for the bridesmaid to be in the same colour as the bride, traditionally bridesmaids used to wear the same colour, to trick the devil so he wouldn't know which woman was the bride and steal her away.  When white dresses became fashionable for brides, bridesmaids also started wearing white. Fashion then changed to bridesmaids wearing coloured dresses in order for the bride to stand out, but we've been seeing white/ivory creep back in over recent years and I think the Royal stamp of approval will give this trend a further push.

Kate's evening dress was another McQueen creation, a strapless white gazar mid length dress with diamante detail, worn with a white bolero. I think it's great how the couple had the formal ceremony expected of a Royal couple in the morning, but then were able to have a much more relaxed evening reception that seemed to be a reflection of how they would have done things if not bound by the fact it was a Royal Wedding.

So what happens to the dresses now? Well, Kate is apparently considering several options as to what to do with the main wedding dress: there has been talk of it being auctioned for charity and also going on public display so people can appreciate up close the beautiful workmanship involved. And as mentioned before, expect the copies to start hitting the bridal shops next season -  in fact, someone's already done it! 

 - Helen

What Katie did... A Royal Wedding

We held our breaths.  We placed bets.  We speculated.  We gossiped.  And now the big day is here and we can see just how Prince William and Catherine Middleton celebrated their special day.

The dress was kept well under wraps and we all spent a long time trying to figure out what style she would go for.  Whoever said understated elegance and style, kudos for you.  Kate embodied Grace Kelly’s wedding day look and chose to wear a McQueen gown designed by Sarah Burton.  We saw close fitting Chantilly Lace sleeves, a slightly pleated skirt, simple veil and short train.  She wore her hair down but pulled back from the front to frame the beautiful ‘Halo’ tiara, made by Cartier in 1936 and held a discreet bouquet.  It was her beauty and poise that captured our hearts. 

The flower girls were adorable in white pleated dresses and her Maid of Honour, her sister Pippa, wore a white cowl-necked also designed by Sarah Burton. The flower girls and Maid of Honour’s hair were all adorned with flowers.  The pageboys looked fit for a royal occasion in their red and white attire.

 

Carol Middleton, the MOB, wore a blue Catherine Walker dress and a Jane Corbett hat while Queen Elizabeth II looked regal in a primrose Angela Kelly dress.

Of course there were hundreds and thousands of well-turned out guests, from Tara Palmer-Tompkinson in electric blue to the ever stylish Posh and Becks (who I must say looked incredibly dashing with his medal).

Kate and Wills decked the entryway of Westminster Abbey with beautiful spring trees.  The green canopy made a dramatic entryway for the ceremony and Kate ensured that each was local and replantable; we all love a ‘green’ Princess. But it’s not the first time trees have been used inside a wedding venue and it won’t be the last. Sophie Kinsella’s popular novel Shopaholic Ties the Knot saw Rebecca Bloomwood choosing to have a forest recreated at her own wedding, though I think Kate and Wills decided to leave out the animatronics fauna.

 

If you want to snap up one of the Princes you’re down by one.  William spent the entire ceremony looking like the cat who got the cream, and why not?  Kate looked beautiful and Twitter was awash with people speculating as to what it was he murmured to her at the alter.  Was it “You look beautiful?" OR "You look unbelievable?”

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Prince Harry.  He was the first to catch a cheeky glance at Kate as she made her way down the aisle. I wonder if Chelsea will be the next to wed one of our royal boys?

Just waiting for the balcony kiss!

Hope you all enjoyed it as much as me 

- Hannah

All photographs from ABC News International.

West Weddings on the Royal Wedding: the day before

Mario Testino via the Telegraph

So the big day is nearly here. Up and down the land, people are preparing their bunting, Pimms and cucumber sandwiches. In London, the police are doing last minute security checks, the dignitaries are flying in from all over the world and the organist at Westminster Abbey is feverishly practising for the hymns. I'm sure Kate Middleton is doing all the last minutes preparations every bride does on the day before their wedding - having a manicure, making sure the dress and accessories are all ready, praying that a nail doesn't break or a spot doesn't emerge.

There's a lot of bah humbugging going on at the moment about the wedding, and I can totally understand where people are coming from. Yes, it's costing the taxpayer money at a time of economic bite. Yes, it involves the Royal Family, who many regard as out of date and out of touch. And yes, it's been difficult to avoid if you really, really don't like weddings and all the resulting media frenzy. All of these topics are worthy of debate, to consider whether the British public should be bankrolling the lifestyle of an elite group of people.

But, if you're reading this, I'm going to guess that you're either planning your own wedding or really like them. And that is the point I'd like to focus on: the wedding. And more importantly, the couple in question. Because, what it really comes down to, ignoring the 1900 guests and the security forces and the questions surrounding the dress and all the hoop-la of a spectacle played out on the world stage, is two people saying that they love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together. I was lucky enough to be able to do that last year, and have all my family and friends toast this new chapter in our lives. As a couple who seem to be very much in love, William and Kate deserve to have that too, and I really hope that their big day is everything they wanted and more. 

A wedding is such a happy, happy occasion. So tomorrow, at 11am, I will be raising my glass to William and Kate, and wishing them all the best for their lives together. Because that's what a wedding is about.

What will you be doing for the Royal Wedding? If you're in Bristol some of the WW team will be down in Millennium Square watching it on the big screen - come say hello if you're there too!

 - Helen

The death of the strapless dress?

You know wedding season is coming up when searches for wedding hats have increased by 235% in the last month. How do we know this? Well, Twenga, the new-generation search engine which enables shoppers to see items from different retailers across the world in one handy place, has released data today about what brides in 2011 are looking for online.

The dress silhouette of the moment, according to the research, is the princess cut, closely followed by the mermaid and empire line. Perhaps marking the end of the strapless dress' dominance over the last few years, the most popular necklines are off the collar, scoop and v necks.

Veils are also up in popularity, with Twenga noting a 113% increase in searches for this item.

Pronovias is the most searched-for brand, but Ronald Joyce and Justin Alexander, in second and third place, have seen a rise in their popularity. In fourth is Benjamin Roberts and  budget-savvy brides have resulted in Nicholas Millington coming in fifth.

Of course, with two Royal Weddings coming up in the next six months - as well as fashion royalty Kate Moss - it will be interesting to see how the dresses chosen will influence other brides' choices. Just as copies of Oscar gowns go on sale immediately after the ceremony, so too have Royal Weddings traditionally led to dress styles being emulated within days of their first glimpse - something that began in Victorian times. Whatever Kate, Kate and Zara opt for will soon be showing up in Twenga's search results.