Did Kate Middleton have two decoy wedding dresses?
When Kate Middleton wed Prince William back in 2011, it was the fairytale royal wedding everyone had been dreaming of. But while everything was perfect on the big day, it seems like there might have been a few issues behind the scenes in the run-up to it, involved Kate Middleton's wedding dress.
Despited her best efforts to keep it a secret, a couple of months before she walked down the aisle, the story broke that she had picked Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen to design her gown, reportedly bringing her to tears.
The Duchess of Cambridge tried so hard to keep the dress a secret that she even apparently had two decoy dresses made by other designers, so that in case of a leak, she could switch.
According to The Telegraph, as well as the McQueen one, two other wedding dresses were made by other British designers Bruce Oldfield (a Princess Diana favourite) and Jasper Conran.
Fashion writer Anne Chertoff told the paper at the time, 'Miss Middleton has commissioned three wedding dresses from three different designers…(she) has two "backups" should the designer of her chosen wedding dress be correctly leaked, in which case she’ll wear one of the others.'
Now, given that even though Sarah Burton's involvement was leaked and Catherine still wore her design, it could well be that these were just rumours. However she wouldn't be the first royal to have a back-up wedding gown.
Princess Diana famously had two identical wedding dresses made my David Emanuel, in case anything happened to the first one.
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Meanwhile, Jackie Kennedy's dress was ruined 10 days before her wedding to John F. Kennedy when her designer's studio was flooded, so that they had to recreated it (and the bridesmaids' dresses) completely in a fraction of the time.
Penny Goldstone is the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire, covering everything from catwalk trends to royal fashion and the latest high street and Instagram must-haves.
Penny grew up in France and studied languages and law at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris before moving to the UK for her MA in multimedia journalism at Bournemouth University. She moved to the UK permanently and has never looked back (though she does go back regularly to stock up on cheese and wine).
Although she's always loved fashion - she used to create scrapbooks of her favourite trends and looks, including Sienna Miller and Kate Moss' boho phase - her first job was at MoneySavingExpert.com, sourcing the best deals for everything from restaurants to designer sales.
However she quit after two years to follow her true passion, fashion journalism, and after many years of internships and freelance stints at magazines including Red, Cosmopolitan, Stylist and Good Housekeeping, landed her dream job as the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire UK.
Her favourite part of the job is discovering new brands and meeting designers, and travelling the world to attend events and fashion shows. Seeing her first Chanel runway IRL at Paris Fashion Week was a true pinch-me moment.
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