Top secret security guarded Princess Diana's wedding dress and even had a decoy

30 December 2023 , 08:37

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A security team watched Diana's dress ahead of the wedding (Image: Getty Images)

Many brides choose to keep their wedding dresses secret, but few feel the need to have a top security team keeping an eye on it ahead of the big day as Princess Diana did in the 1980s.

Once engaged to Prince Charles, excitement levels across the UK continued to rise ahead of the royal wedding in 1981. As a result extra measures were introduced for designers Elizabeth and David Emanuel so details on Lady Diana Spencer’s dress. Ahead of the day the then aged 20-year-old had asked the pair to keep it “very, very secret” before the big reveal of the beautiful antique lace and ivory silk taffeta gown as she made her way to St Paul’s Cathedral in front of around 750million people watching worldwide.

Elizabeth told HELLO! : “"She asked us to keep [the wedding dress] very, very secret, which we did. But I think there was so much interest when she did actually wear the black dress that the press wanted to know who is designing her wedding dress and they had to announce it at that time.

“Our staff were wonderful and very loyal and didn't talk to anybody. We had the dress 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 We also made a back-up dress just in case the secret came out, which fortunately it didn't.”

After the dress was finally unveiled on July 29, 1981, it went on to be one of the most iconic fashion looks throughout history. However her dress designers were left "horrified" when they saw the princess emerge from her carriage before stepping into St Paul's Cathedral. The dress had become severely creased on the way to the cathedral, with Elizabeth admitting she "felt faint" when she saw Diana, during an appearance on ITV's Invitation to the Royal Wedding in 2018.

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She said: "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. I was horrified, really, because it was quite a lot of creasing. It was a lot more than we thought."

The dress included six different fabrics, puffed-up sleeves and more than £10,000 pearls in total, and is reported to have cost £9,000. It also included 25 yards of silk taffeta, 100 yards of tulle crinoline and 150 yards of netting for the veil. The gorgeous gown was followed by a train of 25 feet of hand-embroidered silk.

Antony Clements-Thrower