Lace and long trains: Here's how Meghan Markle's wedding dress compared to Kate Middleton's
Wedding dresses, especially for the women in the royal family or are marrying into one, have to make a statement of some sort. As much as people want to talk about how beautiful the whole ceremony is, the main reason a lot of people watch the ceremony is to see the best dressed and the worst dressed attendees. The bride has to be the most beautiful one present and this is easy with the help of established designers.
Even though they have married brothers from the British royal family, Meghan and Kate could not have been anymore different than their wedding dresses.
Meghan's dress (2018)
Acclaimed British designer Claire Waight Keller was the one who got the honor to design Meghan's wedding dress. Last year, Keller was announced as the first female artistic director at Givenchy, the famous fashion house from Paris. Meghan and Keller met early this year to discuss her wedding gown and they immediately connected.
The dress was something that should not only make Meghan stand out in the crowd but, on the request of the bride, should also be able to epitomise what Givenchy stood for which breaks the barrier of time and showed the exquisite craftsmanship that can only come from a fashion house that was founded in 1952.
The veil was an interesting piece copared to the bare minimal gown. Meghan wanted to have all the 53 Commonwealth countries represented on it so Keller has to be creative. Staggeringly, she was able to use indigenous flora from each of the nations and make it look truly stunning in the end.
Being 5 metres long, the veil was made using silk tulle and has hand-embroidered flowers sewn on with silk thread and organza. Each flower on the long veil had to be flattened, and that to in three dimensions, so that they formed a subtle design that was unique and delicate. The people who worked on it had to put in many hundreds of hours in sewing and were made to wash their hands every 30 minutes to avoid getting the material dirty.
Aside from the Commonwealth flowers, Meghan also requested two flowers to be added that mean a lot to her: Wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox), which grows in the grounds of Kensington Palace in front of Nottingham Cottage, and the California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) the State flower from Meghan's place of birth, California.
There are also many crops of wheat placed on the front of the veil. The wheat is a symbol of love and charity. The veil is held in place by Queen Mary's diamond bandeau tiara, lent to Meghan by The Queen. The diamond bandeau is English and was made in 1932, with the centre brooch dating from 1893.
Kate's dress (2011)
Kate Middleton's spectacular dress was designed by Sarah Burton from Alexander McQueen. Kate reportedly wanted to work with the fashion house for her dress because of the way it respects traditional workmanship and the technical construction of cloth. The house of Alexander McQueen granted Kate's wish of having a dress that would strike the perfect balance between traditional and elegant, and modern and chic. Just like Meghan after her, Kate sat down with Sarah Burton to design her dress.
The dress is the final product of the hard work put in by a slew of talented and skilled people from across the nation. Burton's designs were able to pay tribute to the Arts and Crafts tradition, which is all about showing off the material and the simple way a dress can be decorated to look like it's a blend of old and new. The final product made Kate look feminine and contemporary at the same time.
Kate's veil was made of soft, ivory silk tulle which had a trim of hand-embroidered flowers on it. The embroidery was done the Royal School of Needlework and was kept on her head with a Cartier "halo" tiara that the Queen gave Kate to wear.
The tiara was bought by the Duke of York, who later became King George VI, for his Duchess, who later became Queen Elizabeth I or the Queen mother. This took place in 1936 and it was three weeks after King George VI succeeded his brother as King.The Queen mother then gave the tiara to Princess Elizabeth, now The Queen, for her 18th birthday.