For centuries, royal weddings in Britain have adopted and adapted historic traditions while reflecting the social and cultural environment of their time, and nowhere is this more evident than in fashion.
While generations of royal men have married in military uniform or morning clothes, women connected with the monarchy have walked down the aisle in an array of fashionable dresses, from art-deco embroidered frocks to extravagant voluminous gowns.
Though the brides' dresses themselves have always been the core focus of the fashion minded royal watcher at such times, those worn by the bridesmaids have not gone unnoticed and have regularly played an important role in the timeline of royal fashion history.
Here, Newsweek, takes a look at five royal bridesmaids dresses that created lasting fashion impact.
First Royal Commission
The wedding of King George V's son, Prince Henry the Duke of Gloucester, to Lady Alice Montagu Douglas Scott, was significant for introducing one of Britain's most famous fashion designers into the royal family.
Lady Alice commissioned Norman Hartnell, a London designer, to make her wedding dress and those of her bridesmaids, one of whom was to be her new niece, Princess Elizabeth of York (later Queen Elizabeth II).
After being fitted for the dress at his salon, Elizabeth's mother became Hartnell's loyal client and, eventually, the designer made the wedding and coronation dress for Queen Elizabeth II herself.
Hartnell became the first fashion designer to be given a knighthood.
Postwar Glamour
When Queen Elizabeth II married Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark while she was still a princess in 1947, Norman Hartnell was given the commission for her wedding gown and those of her bridesmaids.
For the designs, Hartnell took inspiration from art history, basing the embroidery designs used throughout on Sandro Botticelli's " La Primavera" painting.
The wedding took place while clothes rationing was still in effect after World War II, and the bridesmaids wore tulle gowns with stars embroidered in swags with short shoulder capelets.
One of Elizabeth's bridesmaids was a friend named Lady Elizabeth Lambart. In July 2024, Lambert's descendants sold the dress at auction in London where it reached a hammer price of £37,800 (around $48,200).
80s Excess
When Princess Diana married King Charles III (when still Prince of Wales) in 1981, the wedding became a showcase for the excesses of the 1980s.
Diana shunned the established fashion houses loved by older generations of the royals for the commission of her wedding clothes, instead opting for two young emerging designers, Elizabeth and David Emanuel.
Diana's gown was voluminous in silhouette with a tightly highlighted waist and large puffed sleeves. The princess' train was 25-feet long, the longest of any royal wedding dress.
For the bridesmaids, the Emanuels did not spare with the embellishments. In an echo of Diana's dress, they featured full skirts and puffed sleeves with tiers of lace trimming and ruffles throughout. The gowns were accessorized with pale yellow sashes around the waist and floral headdresses.
Stealing the Show
There were a number of standout moments from Prince William's marriage to Kate Middleton in April 2011, one of which being when the soon-to-be princess left her car at Westminster Abbey with her sister, Pippa Middleton.
Both sisters and the collection of young bridesmaids were styled by the designer Sarah Burton, who was at the time the creative director of the Alexander McQueen fashion house in London.
While Kate's dress was fawned over in the fashion press, an unexpected amount of attention was lavished on Pippa, whose figure-hugging gown featured in news coverage around the world.
After many commentators and social media users placed a focus on her enhanced silhouette in the dress, Middleton said it had been entirely unintentional.
"I think the plan was not really for it to be a significant dress. Really just to sort of blend in with the train," she told NBC in 2014, per Vogue. "I suppose it's flattering, embarrassing, definitely. It wasn't planned."
Controversial Choice
It is likely that the bridesmaids dresses for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will go down in royal history for a not-so-happy reason.
After Harry and Meghan married in May 2018, stories in the British press claimed that Meghan had made Kate cry in an argument over the dress worn by Princess Charlotte for the big day.
In 2021, Meghan disputed this, saying that it had been Kate who'd made her cry and in 2023, Harry gave his own account aligning with his wife saying that both she and Charlotte had cried.
The tears, according to Harry, were over Kate's insistence that Charlotte's dress didn't fit her and needed to be remade with four days left until the wedding day. Kensington Palace have so far not publicly responded to the story or Harry and Meghan's comments.
The bridesmaids dresses at the Sussex wedding are significant for another reason, in that for the first time in over a century they were not made by a British fashion designer.
Meghan opted for the French fashion house of Givenchy to make her haute couture wedding gown and the dresses for her bridesmaids.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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