Queen Victoria’s wedding dress, made of white satin, was a departure from the norm of vibrant colors for royal weddings. The choice of white symbolized romantic propriety and purity. Mary Bettans, a long-serving official dressmaker to Queen Victoria, was considered a fashionable court dressmaker during her early career. Queen Victoria’s wedding dress was notable for establishing a form of bridal fashion.
The dress in question has been dated to 1892 and is believed to have been worn in mourning following the death of her grandson Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, who died during an influenza pandemic. At this point in her life, Victoria was in her early 70s and was also in the fourth decade of mourning her husband Prince Albert, who had died during an influenza pandemic.
At her wedding ceremony, Victoria wore a satin train over six yards long, which twelve attendants carried down the aisle. The Queen adorned her skirt with an exquisite Honiton lace flounce. At her wedding banquet, Victoria swapped her wedding gown for a swansdown white dress and bonnet, “a frenzy of nodding, curtsying, beaming, and…”
Queen Victoria is credited with popularizing the white wedding dress, which came to symbolise romantic propriety and purity. Before her wedding, it was rare to wear white to a wedding. Women usually wore colorful dresses.
📹 Queen Victoria’s Dress | Victoria & Albert: The Wedding | Episode 1 | PBS
Join the experts preparing to reconstruct the wedding that changed history. As they get ready for the ceremony and investigate the …
How small was Queen Victoria?
She was the second longest-reigning English royal, after Queen Elizabeth II. Victoria was short but made a big impact on the modern monarchy. She is known as the Queen Victoria of the Victorian Era.
Early Life and Ascension to the Throne. Alexandrina Victoria was born on May 24, 1819, at Kensington Palace in London. She was the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, and Princess Maria Louisa Victoria. She was fifth in line for the crown at birth, named for her godfather, Russian Tsar Alexander I. Before Victoria was one, Edward died of pneumonia. When King George died, her uncle William IV became king. Because Edward’s brothers had no surviving children, Victoria became the next in line to the throne. Victoria’s mother and John Conroy forced her to follow the Kensington System. The rules were isolating for the girl, who was a gifted artist and diarist. She was made to share her bedroom with her mother and was never alone. A few weeks after turning 18, Victoria became Queen of England on June 20, 1837. She was crowned a year later on June 28, 1838. She fired Conroy and moved into Buckingham Palace, which William owned. She was the first monarch to live there.
Why was Queen Victoria not embalmed?
From the start, things went wrong. The queen didn’t want to be embalmed, so a coffin had to be ordered fast. But when the assistant arrived, he hadn’t brought the expected coffin. He said he needed to take the queen’s measurements. Kaiser Wilhelm, already disliked by his British relatives, was disgusted. “It’s always like this,” he raged. “When someone dies, things are arranged with respect and care. When a “personage” dies, you make mistakes. The same happens in Germany as in England. “You’re all the same!” The kaiser and other courtiers took matters into their own hands because the assistant was too rude to touch the queen.
Did the queen ever wear the same dress?
The Queen only wears the same outfit twice. The Queen rarely wears the same outfit twice. Unlike Kate Middleton, Queen Elizabeth rarely wears the same outfit twice. According to Elizabeth Holmes’ book, the Queen’s outfits are recorded and repeats are spaced out. After she’s worn it a second or third time, the outfit is either reworked or reserved for private events. Visit the Insiders homepage for more stories. Queen Elizabeth often wears the same jewelry, but not the same outfits. Kate Middleton, her granddaughter-in-law, is a master at recycling outfits.
Was Queen Victoria buried in her wedding dress?
Victoria wore her wedding lace to the christenings of her nine children (except for Albert Edwards, for which she wore her Garter robes). She also wore it to the weddings of two of her children.In 1885, her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, wore it in her wedding gown. Victoria also wore it to the wedding of her grandson George (the future George V) to Mary of Teck in 1893 and for her Diamond Jubilee official photograph in 1897. When Victoria died, she was buried with her wedding veil over her face. In 2012, it was reported that the dress was on display at Kensington Palace, but the lace was too fragile to move. Wearing white became popular with wealthy brides. Less than a decade later, Godey’s Lady’s Book said white wedding gowns were an ancient custom. It said that white was the most fitting hue, whatever the material. White is an emblem of purity and innocence. It represents the unsullied heart of a bride. Before Victoria’s wedding, white was a rare choice for bridal gowns. It wasn’t chosen by most brides until decades later. After Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s 2011 wedding, people compared the bride’s white dress to Queen Victoria’s.
What size waist did Queen Victoria have?
1. She was only five feet tall. Queen Victoria was a big woman for her height. She was no more than five feet tall. She also grew to be quite large. Some say she had a 50-inch waist by the end of her life. This is supported by a nightgown and bloomers belonging to Victoria that were auctioned off in 2009.
2. She proposed to Prince Albert, not the other way around. Victoria met her future husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, when she was 16. He was her first cousin, the son of her mother’s brother. Their uncle, Leopold, arranged for them to meet and for them to marry. Victoria liked Albert from the start. With Leopold’s help, she proposed to Albert on October 15, 1839. He had just arrived in England for a visit. They married the next year. Their marriage was passionate and produced nine children. Victoria was not happy about pregnancy and childbirth. She called it the “shadow side of marriage.”
Why did Queen Victoria wear a white wedding dress?
By the mid-19th century, white lace was common for bridal wear. The V&A collection has many beautiful wedding dresses, like the one May Primrose wore when she married Henry Littledale in 1885. The couple moved to India, and May died in a riding accident a year later. The wedding dress was never worn again and stayed in the family. It is an example of 1880s fashion. It is very slim with a long skirt made of satin and lace. This style was popular for only a short time. The wedding dress is asymmetrical but balanced. The design and size of the bodice and skirt show that May Primrose was a young, fashion-conscious woman, so white was an obvious choice. While white wedding dresses were popular in the 20th century, their symbolism has changed for today’s brides. In today’s world of fashion, choice, and freedom, a modern bride who chooses white is likely aiming for a cultural image, not the specific virtues of purity and innocence.
How long was Queen Victoria’s wedding dress train?
Queen Victoria’s 1840 wedding gown wasn’t the first white wedding dress. Her white silk satin gown with an eighteen-foot-long court train helped popularize the bridal look that persists today. Elizabeth Tyler and many other women across the British Empire and beyond probably saw and were inspired by Victoria’s English-made wedding dress.
Credit: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023.
Did Prince Albert love Queen Victoria?
Victoria and Albert’s engagement. The couple met at Victoria’s 17th birthday in April 1836. Their uncle, Leopold I of Belgium, introduced them. In their memoirs, Albert and Victoria say they fell in love right away. After Victoria became queen in 1837, no one could propose to her. So Victoria proposed to Albert during his second visit in October 1839 at Windsor Castle in Berkshire.
Victoria and Albert’s wedding. On February 10, 1840, Queen Victoria married Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. They were married at St. James Palace in London. This was the first marriage of an English queen since Queen Mary in 1554.
What clothes was Queen Victoria buried in?
Queen Victoria died at 81 in January 1901. Since her husband Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria was in black. She was buried with her wedding rings. We are part of the Yahoo family. When you use our sites and apps, we use cookies. We provide our sites and apps to you, authenticate users, apply security measures, prevent spam and abuse, and measure your use of our sites and apps.
What did Queen Victoria’s wedding dress look like?
Queen Victoria wore black for most of her reign to mourn her husband Albert. She started a new fashion trend. Brides wear white on their wedding day. After her wedding, Victoria wrote in her journal that she wore a white satin gown with a deep flounce of Honiton lace. I wore my Turkish diamond necklace and earrings, and Albert’s sapphire brooch. The 21-year-old queen didn’t know that her white satin gown would start a bridal dress trend that would last for centuries. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in their wedding photo, 1854. At Queen Victoria’s wedding to Prince Albert, wedding dresses came in many colors. Victoria chose white. White gowns were not popular because it was hard to keep them white. White clothes showed wealth.
📹 BBC Victoria and Albert The Royal Wedding with Lucy Worsley
Given the high standard of these BBC productions I puzzled at the number of glaring errors in this program that no one at seems to have caught at the level of the conception of the project. There should have been a fanfare to announce the arrival of the bride into the chapel since she was a crowned and anointed queen by this point. Also the choir of the chapel royal was and is an all male ensemble and the choirboys then as now would have worn their Tudor style uniforms not cassocks and surplices. The choir would not have sung anything until the ceremony proper had begun, they are there to provide the music for the formal liturgy not entertain the wedding guests before the ceremony has begun. Also why is the groom on the wrong side?, grooms are always on the bride’s right hand side. The dress of many of the guests is very strange; first the senior court ladies should be in full court dress with tiaras and trains (ie. her mother, the dowager duchess of Kent, the dowager queen Adelaide, etc.). Not sure why the dowager duchess of Kent as referred to as the Queen Mother, since she was never queen consort so she could not be Queen Mother, Many of the guest are actually wearing costumes that at the would have been 20 years out of fashion, the high waists of the Regency was absolutely out of fashion by that point and everyone certainly would have been dressed at the height of fashion for a Court wedding. And until very recently no one applauded at a religious ceremony regardless of the nature of the event.
Queen Victorias mother got such a bad rap. She was married off to a 58-year-old man when she was just 17. She had 2 children with him, he died just 11 years after they married. It left her grieving, raising her 2 children, also a very young, wealthy widow. When the Duke of Kent heard of this, he saw her as ticking two very important boxes. Her money to help with his gambling debts & fertile enough to provide an heir. They moved from Germany to an outskirt of London, a less costly place to live. The Duchess of Kent barely spoke any English, had to leave her 2 children, family & friends behind. She was very lonely. She became pregnant immediately, when she went into labor earlier than expected, had to endure a bumpy coach ride to London while in labor so that members of the royal family could watch & witness the birth. This was essential in securing the child in the line of succession to the throne. According to her journals, Queen Victoria loved affection & sex. Her mother was the same. Being twice widowed, when the Duke of Kent died just 8 months after Victoria was born (her first name was Alexandrina) it left the Duchess deeply lonely. There were frequent assassination plots to kill Victoria. She dedicated the following 18 years of her life, protecting her daughter. As the mother of a possible future Queen, she couldn’t remarry as any possible suitors would have to be approved by the King, he refused to approve anyone. She could have gone back to Coburg, Germany to visit her children, friends & family, however, she would not be allowed to take Victoria with her, leaving her open to assassination.