A right royal affair
Designing a wedding dress is an exciting task in itself – especially when the customer is marrying into the Royal Family. Your Wedding speaks to the lady behind the latest gown at Windsor
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THE skies over Windsor Castle may have been grey and it’s been reported that some members of the Royal Family were not amused.
But with a reported £500,000 Hello! magazine deal and her handsome ‘prince’ on her arm, Autumn shone golden in May.
Canadian-born Autumn Kelly emerged from St George’s Chapel smiling and looking radiant in an elegant ivory Chantilly-lace and duchesse satin gown alongside new husband Peter Phillips, son of Princess Anne and grandson of the Queen.
Although the 30-year-old may have made a social gaffe by selling out to a celebrity magazine, she chose the right society wedding dress designer for her big day.
Sassi Holford is synonymous in smart circles for her clever corsets and has been designing bridal gowns for nice society gals since she left school in 1981. Self-taught, one of the first tasks Sassi set herself was to create a replica of Princess Diana’s wedding dress overnight. But the fact that she has now designed for a royal wedding in reality is purely a coincidence.
She said: “Autumn was a guest at a couple of society weddings where I’d done the dresses and I was also recommended to her by some clients. She went on my website to see if she liked my style and then came to the shop.
“But she was very discreet. She didn’t tell us who she was or who she was marrying and I had no idea at first.”
Being commissioned to design a dress for a royal wedding could be quite daunting, but even when she did find out, Sassi treated it as just another day in the office.
“The only difference between a royal wedding and any other wedding is the amount of eyes watching us. There’s press and television involved and with Autumn being Canadian there’s been worldwide interest.
“But a society wedding is still a big wedding and quite often it’s in a cathedral so on the scale of things, there’s not much difference. It’s just that on this one the profile was a notch up.”
Like many brides, Autumn had a clear idea of what she wanted. “She tried on some of my sample dresses and I took the bits she liked and collated it into a design to reflect her own style and personality.
“For this particular dress the fabrics were sourced in Europe. The lace was hand-beaded French Chantilly, the fabric was an Italian silk duchesse and her veil was Swiss silk tulle.”
Although she says that the royal wedding was “just like any big wedding really”, there were a few unique occurrences.
Autumn’s ‘something borrowed’ was a diamond tiara lent by her new mother-in-law, Princess Anne. The princess wore it aged 23 for an official birthday portrait and most recently at the state banquet in honour of Nicolas Sarkozy.
So Sassi stayed clear when it came to fitting the tiara over the veil and left that to the hairdresser.
She said: “A tiara of that note needs to become integral to the hairstyle to be totally secure. When you’ve got that many diamonds on your head you don’t want them falling off!”
And there are not many situations where you turn a corner and bump into the Queen, as Sassi did on the day.
She said: “Autumn and I were going down the stairs and we literally bumped into the Queen and Prince Philip.
“I was holding the back of the train and was well aware at this point I should be curtseying so I did this really pathetic wobble.
“I didn’t want to drop the dress, but I didn’t want to not do the right thing. So I did this shimmy which probably amused the Queen no end.
“Autumn quickly introduced me to the Queen before the wedding party departed for the chapel. That was a lovely surprise for me on the day. A real added bonus!”
The procedure on the day was like clockwork – after all, this is a family used to big functions.
Sassi said: “I had about 10 minutes to fit the dress, not very long at all, but we knew what we were doing. I was there to assist in any way I could and helped Zara Phillips and the other bridesmaids into their dresses.
“Nothing’s infallible; zips sometimes play up or someone steps on the dress. Things do go wrong. But on Saturday the gods were with me and everything was perfect. It was a textbook wedding.”
The strapless eau-de-nil column bridesmaids’ dresses were designed by Vera Wang, who made Victoria Beckham’s wedding dress and Sassi admits she would have liked to have taken the look ‘all the way’.
However, she admits: “There are occasions when we do the wedding dress and clothe the bridesmaids and the mother of the bride and it can be all-consuming.
“On reflection, without that additional concern, I could just concentrate on the dress and completely focus on the bride.
“Autumn had two pre-fits, three dress fittings and a final check at Windsor Castle. I anticipate a little bit of weight loss for most of our brides so at the final fitting it would have been as snug as possible.
“I jokingly said to her, ‘For the next fortnight, if in doubt, eat!’ and she laughed and said, ‘No problem’. She loves her food.”
In fact the dress fitted so well and Autumn loved it so much that she didn’t change after the reception.
“Strapless dresses are ideal because you can put some coverage on, such as the little shrug Autumn wore which was very demure for the wedding but when it was taken off, the dress was perfect for the evening.
“She loved the dress so much she wanted to dance in it all evening and said she wouldn’t mind if she slept in it!” reveals Sassi.
Sadly, controversy over the deal with Hello! magazine seems to have put a slight dampener on the day which even the wedding dress designer couldn’t escape.
“It’s been written in the press that I was making the dress for free because ‘Princess Pushy’ – as they called Autumn – asked for it and that’s totally untrue,” says Sassi.
She will never disclose how much she charges her clients but her bespoke designs cost upwards of £4,000 and her mainstream line from £1,800.
She added: “Society weddings are always in Hello! I think this way Autumn and Peter have been able to control the publicity and it could be favourable to them. It’s their choice.
“At the end of the day, if someone wants to offer you half a million pounds, you’ve got to be fairly rich to say no.”
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