When Lady Gabriella Windsor – the daughter of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent – tied the knot at St George’s Chapel Windsor in another chic royal wedding, the bride was following in the footsteps of two of the most famous royal brides ever… but she stood out by doing it her way.
Almost a year to the day since Meghan Markle married Prince Harry in a custom Givenchy wedding gown designer by Clare Waight Keller, Lady Gabriella Windsor married her long-term boyfriend, Thomas Kingston, who proposed last summer on the Isle of Stark. The couple gathered quite the regal guest list with the Queen and Prince Harry watching on as Gabriella took to the aisle in a Louisa Baccaria gown.
The woman behind the dress, the charismatic Italian designer, shares the secrets behind the dress which was designed and made in Luisa Beccaria’s couture atelier. Speaking to GLAMOUR UK in the days prior to the wedding, Luisa said she hoped the wedding went smoothly, explaining: “I hope so, it could be a nightmare! All these things with the queen, this is allowed, this isn’t allowed. But it’s beautiful, she is a sweetheart! I liked her from the first moment I saw her!”
Lady Gabriella Windsor – known as Ella – was clearly delighted with the dress. “I was so lucky to have my dream dress designed by Luisa Beccaria, she and her team are exceptional, and I am thrilled with the stunning result of their craftsmanship. I have been in love with this brand for a long time!,” she said.
Here, Luisa reveals the secrets behind the dress and reveals her tips for brides. Pass the tiara…
How I met the bride…
I have been friends with her parents for about ten years. We have spent so many holidays on boats. We immediately hit it off and I first met Lady Gabriella at Prince Michael of Kent’s birthday party at Kensington Palace – beautiful Ella! She immediately told me she was a fan of my brand and she’s been wearing it more and more. This summer, her mother (Princess Michael of Kent) came on holiday with us in Sicily and she told me that they were going to marry. I was so happy for them; I wasn’t even thinking about designing the dress as I just assumed they would pick a British designer, as we are an Italian brand with all our tailors in Milan and given the fact, they are members of the Royal Family.
It was a very close collaboration between our team and the bride – she knew exactly what she wanted – that always makes it so much easier…
It was a very close collaboration as she’s a very intelligent girl, she knows exactly what she wants to look like and who she is. That makes life so much easier as a bridal designer. When a bride arrives with an entire family and they don’t know where to begin. “They want it to be huge, they want it to be deconstructed, it’s a nightmare! With Ella it was different, she fell in love with our romantic style. She had very strong ideas of what she wanted. She wanted something custom-made and never seen before. At the very beginning she was thinking of colour as she wasn’t sure she wanted to wear white. We were looking at something quite alternative but when Windsor was confirmed she knew she wanted white and respect the tradition whilst trying to be herself. She’s a very free spirit. She wanted something close to the body to show her figure and a bit more regal at the same time.
We took inspiration from the tiara…
We found out she was going to wear Princess Marina of Greece’s (her grandmother) – tiara and looking at those photos, we took inspiration from that and that heavily influenced the train. She wanted a blush colour underneath the white.
It’s very low-key on purpose, very elegant but not a huge glamorous wedding. This one is going to be something completely different to Meghan and Eugenie’s wedding…
Gabriella is one of my favourite amongst the royals of today, maybe because she’s freer than others because she’s not running for the throne. She’s a very simple soul with a normal life. For one day, she is playing the role of a princess. To me, she has interpreted the modern role of princess. This is a very modern bride. It’s very low-key on purpose, very elegant but not a huge glamorous wedding. This one is going to be something completely different to Meghan and Eugenie’s wedding. She is the one who is near to what I like about a royal today because she has this simplicity and way of reacting towards life that is very personal and understated. The other weddings were very much a society mix. This one is also like that in a certain way but in a more harmonious and smaller scale. She has her own modernity to go forward in her own life.
Lady Gabriella is free spirit with a very normal working life. We had to do fittings around her lunch breaks…
She came to Milan for the fitting – we’ve just had two fittings for now, this is the third one. When she came to Milan, from the morning to the afternoon, she tried the dresses because she couldn’t miss work and when I came to London, we had a two-hour fitting and she was, ‘like hurry up because she couldn’t have too much time out the office!’ Everything is very real. Nothing spoilt.
The wedding dress trend this dress will inspire is…
The new dress trend is dreamy and fairytale but also simple. If I think of dresses like Princess Diana’s, they were all very overdone. With this dress, the very richness is given from this incredible workmanship and fabrics that are rigid but in layers. It sits on your body like a second skin, which is the beauty of it. There is a fluidity and therefore a certain coolness in this day.
The second evening dress we designed is much more of an evening gown…
I did another bridal dress for Gabriella in the evening. She changed into another bridal gown which was white but was much more of an evening gown. The back is out and it’s much whiter than the bridal one and it has some shine in it, some threads that are mother of pearls. It’s much more iridescent. Evening dresses are great, but they shouldn’t be too similar. Give yourself the opportunity to translate yourself in a different way. Although the materials are similar because they are both tulle, the other one is more of a day wedding – no shine, much thicker, more embellished. This one is sexier, open, the back is out, these two ribbons in lace.
