The bride will wear a £100k dress!
She won’t go on honeymoon straight away or have a maid of honour. But …
MEGHAN Markle’s hugely anticipated wedding dress will set the Royal Family back £100,000.
Multiple royal and fashion industry sources have revealed the actress has opted for British couturiers Ralph & Russo to make the first of two gowns she plans to wear on May 19.
She will wear the hand-stitched, heavily beaded design to walk down the aisle at St George’s Chapel in front of 600 guests – and an estimated billion TV viewers worldwide – as well as for the reception being held afterwards by the Queen in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle.
Another source revealed that the dress would cost around £100,000, which will be met by Prince Harry
‘Hundreds of hours of manpower’
and his family privately. ‘It sounds a lot but this is the wedding of the year and hundreds of hours of manpower have gone into making it, almost all by hand,’ they said.
News of her dress came as Kensington Palace revealed new details about the wedding, including that Harry, 33, and Meghan, 36, will not go on honeymoon until later in the summer and will conduct their first public engagement as man and wife days after their wedding.
As excitement builds, it was also announced that:
Meghan’s parents will meet the Queen, Charles and Camilla ahead of the wedding before her mother accompanies her by car to the chapel and her father walks her down the aisle.
Harry will honour his late mother Diana in the ceremony, with all three of her siblings attending and one, Lady Jane Fellowes, giving a reading.
There will be no maids of honour. All the bridesmaids and pageboys – believed to include Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Mia Tindall – will be children.
The Duchess of Cambridge will attend, but without her newborn son, Prince Louis.
Prince Philip, 96, is ‘hopeful’ of attending but is still convalescing from his hip replacement and may miss his grandson’s big day.
Harry, sources say, has been kept in the dark about his fiancee’s dress – he doesn’t even know who is designing it – because he wants it to be a ‘complete surprise’ on the day.
‘He is so excited about the wedding and is being remarkably traditional about everything,’ the source said.
Ralph & Russo have been odds-on favourite for the commission since Meghan wore a £56,000 semi-sheer black evening dress from the label for her official engagement portrait.
Intriguingly, earlier this week their haute couture atelier team visited the Royal School of Needlework, which was responsible for the bespoke lace on the Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress and boasts a long association with the Royal Family.
Meghan will change into another dress for a second, black-tie evening reception thrown by Prince Charles at Frogmore House in the grounds of Windsor Great Park.
British company Burberry and its outgoing chief designer Christopher Bailey or beloved royal label Erdem are tipped to create this dress.
Kensington Palace said Harry and Meghan’s first engagement as a married couple will be the week after the wedding. It is thought that it might be associated with commemorations for last year’s Manchester Arena bomb attack on May 22.
It is not unusual for royal couples to delay their honeymoon, and it is also thought Meghan is keen to spend time with the many friends and family who will travel from the US and Canada for the wedding.
Officials also confirmed that Meghan would not have a USstyle maid of honour because she couldn’t choose between her close-knit group of girlfriends.
A spokesman said: ‘They have been actively involved in helping her prepare for the day and will be there with her the day before in London. She will be pleased to have their support on the day but they have no official role.’