The Best Royal Wedding Dresses of All Time

When it comes to royals, not just any old bridal gown will do. Often bespoke and designed by some of the most sought-after fashion designers in the world, the best royal wedding dresses of all time are made to wow, creating a lasting moment in sartorial history.

They span a wide range of titles, decades and countries, ranging from Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco’s iconic 1956 Helen Rose masterpiece to the most popular royal dresses of the decade as worn by Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton.

While the style will vary from royal bride to royal bride (Princess Margaret’s Norman Hartnell gown was once called “the simplest royal wedding gown in history,” while Princess Charlene of Monaco’s Giorgio Armani creation took a team of seamstresses more than three months to put together and boasted 40,000 Swarovski crystals), they are all utterly unforgettable.

Here are the best royal wedding dresses of all time.

Princess Diana

Princess Diana broke records with the wedding dress she wore to marry King Charles III in 1981. She walked down the aisle in an ivory and silk taffeta Elizabeth and David Emanuel gown with antique lace that was once worn by Queen Mary. Its train trailed 25 feet behind her — the longest train ever worn by a British royal bride — and had to be folded like a bedsheet to fit into the carriage.

So cumbersome was the train that Diana told bridesmaid India Hicks to do her “best” while carrying it down the aisle. “We knew what that meant: If we pulled too much, straightening the material, her tiara and veil would slip,” Hicks told Harper’s Bazaar in 2018. “But if we didn’t pull enough, the effect of the train would be lost.”

Additionally, the gown featured a ruffled neckline, a puffy skirt and voluminous sleeves. Inside were two hidden gems: a blue bow at the waistband for her “something blue” and a little gold horseshoe as a good luck charm.

The people’s princess also wore a custom tulle veil that was hand-stitched with 10,000 micro-pearls to create what Elizabeth Emanuel later called a “fairy dust effect” to Vogue U.K. “We used the same sequins on the gown itself, so that it would also sparkle as Diana walked down the aisle,” she said.

Princess Diana finished her bridal look with her family’s Spencer Tiara, previously worn by her sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, and her former sister-in-law, Victoria Lockwood.

Kate Middleton

Kate Middleton wore a custom gown by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen to wed Prince William in 2011. The ivory ballgown featured a Victorian-style lace bodice with a V-neckline, a skirt that was padded at the hips to resemble an opening flower and a nearly 9-foot-long train.

The dress’s English Cluny and French Chantilly lace was hand-cut and hand-appliquéd with a rose, a thistle, a daffodil and a shamrock to represent the four countries that make up the United Kingdom. This was accomplished using an old Irish Carrickmacross lace-making technique that Kate claimed as her “something old,” per BBC. Meanwhile, a blue ribbon was sewn into the dress’s interior as her “something blue.”

With such intricate detailing, embroiderers were reportedly required to wash their hands every 30 minutes to keep the garment clean, with needles being renewed every three hours.

Queen Elizabeth II lent the Princess of Wales the Cartier halo tiara for the occasion, which featured 739 brilliant-cut diamonds and 139 baguette diamonds. The tiara was purchased by King George VI for the late Queen’s mother and was presented to Queen Elizabeth on her 18th birthday.

Following the couple’s nuptials, the gown was displayed at Buckingham Palace, where it drew a record-breaking 600,000 people over the summer of 2011.

Meghan Markle

One might expect Meghan Markle’s wedding dress — the reigning most popular wedding dress of the decade — to be overly opulent, but the Clare Waight Keller-designed piece was surprisingly simple. Reportedly inspired by a gown of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s, it was free of lace and embellishments, relying instead on its sleek bateau neckline, three-quarter sleeves and 9-foot train for its “wow” factor.

Between its pure white hue and delicate double-bonded silk cady material, those sewing the gown took special care: They were instructed to wash their hands every 30 minutes “to keep the tulle and threads pristine.” Waight Keller later explained, “Over a period of time, you build up oils on your hand and when you work on something of such purity — absolute pure white — you need to keep it immaculately clean … There were many people involved in the workmanship, and obviously it took an enormous amount of hours to do it.”

The bride’s 16-foot veil was highly symbolic as it was designed to represent the 53 countries of the Commonwealth as well as Markle’s home state of California. “We both loved the story of that,” Waight Keller said. “It also meant that every single one of those countries also journeyed up the aisle with her. It was a really poetic moment.”

The veil also contained a hidden piece of fabric from Meghan’s first date with Prince Harry. “Somewhere in here there’s a piece of blue fabric that’s stitched inside,” the Duchess of Sussex said in the HBO documentary Queen of the World.

Embroidered crops of wheat, which symbolize love and charity, were also worked into the front of the veil.

For her “something old” and “something borrowed,” Meghan wore the Queen Mary Diamond Bandeau tiara from Queen Elizabeth’s own collection, which was crafted in 1931 with a center brooch that dates back to 1893. Given to Princess Mary as a wedding gift by the County of Lincoln, it was later bequeathed to Queen Elizabeth.

Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II married Prince Philip in the wake of World War II, which meant the government was still rationing clothing — including with the royal family. The monarch collected extra coupons to pay for the gown, 200 of which were bestowed upon her by the government for the special occasion. With them, designer Norman Hartnell created a dress fit for a royal with his team of 350 women in less than three months. In fact, the designer would go on to call the piece “the most beautiful dress [he] ever made.”

Inspired by the Botticelli painting “Primavera,” which symbolizes the coming of spring — an apt metaphor for a nation coming out of war — the gown featured a bodice of star flowers, roses, jasmine blossoms and ears of wheat encrusted with diamanté and 10,000 seed pearls. The ivory silk design also boasted a sweetheart neckline and long sleeves and was just as lovely on its way out, thanks to the 22 buttons that lined the back and its 15-foot train.

The Queen’s “something borrowed” came from the Queen Mary diamond fringe tiara, which once belonged to her grandmother, Mary of Teck. Though it snapped ahead of her nuptials, the bride had it quickly repaired — but a slight gap at the center of the diamond frame remained.

Princess Eugenie

British design duo Peter Pilotto and Christopher De Vos were behind Princess Eugenie’s fairytale gown for her 2018 wedding to Jack Brooksbank, which they created alongside the bride “layer by layer, constructing it from the corset and the complex underskirt to the fitted bodice and full pleated skirt.”

The result was a stunning piece from every angle, including a low-cut back to show off a scar Eugenie obtained at the age of 12 from surgery to correct scoliosis. “I think you can change the way beauty is, and you can show people your scars and I think it’s really special to stand up for that,” the royal said in an interview on This Morning.

With a neckline that folded down at the shoulders and dipped into a low V-back, the dress flowed into a long cathedral train. It also featured several meaningful motifs that were sewn into the jacquard, silk, cotton and viscose fabric, including a thistle for Balmoral Castle in Scotland, ivy for the couple’s former home at Ivy Cottage and a shamrock to represent mother Sarah Ferguson’s Irish roots.

As for accessories, Eugenie borrowed the Greville Emerald Kokoshnik Tiara from the Queen, which matched a pair of diamond-and-emerald drop earrings she received as a gift from Brooksbank. She completed her bridal ensemble with Charlotte Olympia peep-toe heels.

Princess Beatrice

Princess Beatrice’s gown for her wedding to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi was far more traditional than her sister Eugenie’s. In fact, it was first worn by her grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, on three occasions. The Queen first wore the dress to a 1961 state dinner at the British Embassy in Rome. The Queen wore the gown again one year later, at the premiere of Lawrence of Arabia, and finally pulled it from the archives in 1966, when she wore it to the State Opening of Parliament.

Originally designed by Norman Hartnell, the vintage ivory peau de soie taffeta gown, which features diamanté and a geometric checked bodice, was altered slightly by the Queen’s dressmaker Stewart Parvin and dresser Angela Kelly to include organza sleeves.

Meanwhile, the skirt drew a comparison to mom Sarah Ferguson’s 1986 Lindka Cierach wedding dress: It was tweaked to be lined in Duchesse satin — the same material as the Duchessof York’s sleeves.

Beatrice, the first British royal bride to wear an upcycled gown in recent history, discussed the significance of her choice with Caroline de Guitaut, the curator of an exhibition that featured the historical piece at Windsor Castle two months after the nuptials. “She talked a lot about the upcycling aspect and how that was really important to her given the situation that we all find ourselves in at the moment, with the [COVID-19] pandemic and the compromises being made by everybody,” de Guitaut said. “It really was a one-off kind of wedding, the whole concept was just so nice.”

Beatrice also donned the Queen Mary diamond fringe tiara, which the Queen wore on her own wedding day. It was also previously worn by Beatrice’s aunt, Princess Anne. “The Queen saved this grand tiara specifically for Beatrice. It was always reserved for her as they are exceptionally close,” a source told PEOPLE, calling it “arguably the most sentimental [piece] lent from the Queen yet.”