Princess Diana’s Wedding Dress Designer Reveals the Likely Fate of Diana’s Secret Backup Dress After It “Disappeared” Rachel BurchfieldSun, August 9, 2026 at 3:31 PM UTC 0 Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their July 29, 1981 royal wedding day.Credit: GettyThe Gist Princess Diana’s iconic wedding dress was designed by the then husbandandwife team of David and Elizabeth Emanuel. The Princess of Wales wore the creation—complete with a 25foot train—to marry Prince Charles at St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 29, 1981.
Princess Diana’s Wedding Dress Designer Reveals the Likely Fate of Diana’s Secret Backup Dress After It “Disappeared”
Rachel BurchfieldSun, August 9, 2026 at 3:31 PM UTC
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Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their July 29, 1981 royal wedding day.Credit: GettyThe Gist -
Princess Diana’s iconic wedding dress was designed by the then husband-and-wife team of David and Elizabeth Emanuel.
The Princess of Wales wore the creation—complete with a 25-foot train—to marry Prince Charles at St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 29, 1981.
The Emanuels created a secret second dress so under-the-radar that not even Diana knew of its existence.
Princess Diana’s wedding dress designers David and Elizabeth Emanuel designed a secret second wedding dress for the soon-to-be Princess of Wales that was so under-the-radar that not even Diana knew about it.
As to the fate of that backup dress, Elizabeth said, unbelievably, that the not-quite-finished creation was likely “thrown out.” Speaking to People, Elizabeth—who was married to David at the time of Diana’s July 29, 1981 royal wedding, but who she has since divorced—said that she has no idea what happened to the second dress and that “It likely ended up on some sample rail.”
“It probably got reused, torn up, thrown out, who knows?” she added.
Elizabeth Emanuel and Princess Diana.Credit: Getty
The Emanuels created the second dress just in case something happened to Diana’s primary dress, which came complete with a 25-foot train, 10,000 pearls, antique lace, puff sleeves, and a ruffled V-neck. “I was a bit neurotic, and I thought, ‘What happens if somebody breaks in and steals the dress or something spills or there’s a fire or it gets stolen?’” Elizabeth said. “So I thought, ‘I’m gonna make a backup dress.’”
“I just thought, ‘If anything happens, we’ll finish it off and have it ready,’” she continued. “Neither of us wanted to worry her. It was a complete secret.”
David said in a different interview, “At the time we wanted to make absolutely sure that the dress was a surprise. We didn’t try it [the second dress] on Diana. We never even discussed it. We wanted to make sure that we had something there. It was for our own peace of mind, really.”
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David and Elizabeth Emanuel on March 11, 1981, after it was announced they would be designing Lady Diana Spencer’s wedding dress.Credit: Getty
The backup dress was more subdued, Elizabeth explained, and was made from bright white silk rather than the ivory taffeta that made up Diana’s dress that the world saw as she married Prince Charles. The second dress also had arms that were more fitted to Diana’s body with frilly cuffs, and “It was only three-quarters finished,” Elizabeth told The Daily Mail. “We simply didn’t have time to make it in its entirety, so none of the embroidery or finishing touches were done.”
She added that the backup dress “was hanging up in the studio for a long time, and then it disappeared. I don’t know if we sold it or put it into storage. It was such a busy time. I’m sure it’ll turn up in a bag one day!”
Prince Charles and Princess Diana leaving their wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral.Credit: Getty
Princess Diana sitting for her official wedding portrait on July 29, 1981.Credit: Getty
Unlike the secrecy about who was designing Kate Middleton’s wedding dress in 2011 or Meghan Markle’s gown in 2018, the public knew that the Emanuels were working on Lady Diana Spencer’s wedding look. “When Diana came in for a fitting, there would be hundreds of people outside waiting to spot her,” Elizabeth said. “We had to put shutters up on our windows, and we used to put bits of fabric in different colors in the bins just to throw the journalists off the scent.”
Princess Diana and Prince Charles on the Buckingham Palace balcony.Credit: Getty
Elizabeth Emanuel on June 29, 2007.Credit: Getty
“We had the dress stored every night in a metal cabinet guarded by two guards, Jim and Bert,” Elizabeth said (per Hello!). “So there was somebody there 24 hours a day, and we put shutters on all our windows, and we put false color threads in the rubbish bins because people were going through our bins.”
Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their royal wedding day.Credit: Getty
On the day of Charles and Diana’s wedding, Elizabeth remembered helping Diana before she got into her horse-drawn carriage to take her to St. Paul’s Cathedral and the life that awaited her. “We could hear the people outside cheering,” Elizabeth remembered. “Everybody was happy and smiling. It really was a fairytale wedding.”
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Source: Entertainment
Published: August 9, 2026 at 11:45AM on Source: PRIME TIME
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