Image credit: courtesy of the Royal Hashemite Court
Here’s the dilemma that usually faces wedding guests: how do you dress well, without upstaging the bride? When you’re a public figure, the question becomes far more difficult to answer. But it’s a code that Kate, Princess of Wales, always seems to have a handle on—to be expected, really, for a royal whose reputation rests on sartorial diplomacy. She tours foreign countries in the colours of their respective flags and pins their national flora to a lapel; she pays homage to royals past, Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth II most regularly, with the choice of a tiara or tactful earring.
That Kate knows how to tread the line between style and subtlety makes her the ideal blueprint for wedding guest style. It’s an astuteness she’s demonstrated time and time again, from a raspberry pink Alexander McQueen midi dress and matching beret at Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank’s nuptials in 2018, to a blush Alexander McQueen number at the wedding of her sister, Pippa Middleton, the year prior—a floaty, bishop-sleeved number she accessorised with a fascinator in the same ballet-slipper hue.
Demure, feminine dresses that reach the knee, in a colour that’s warm or soft on the eye—that, typically, is the formula that Kate relies on. The virtues of the approach were certainly on full display recently at the wedding of Crown Prince Hussein and Princess Rajwa of Jordan, which Kate attended alongside husband Prince William. The Princess of Wales doubled down on pink for the big day, wearing a long-sleeved Elie Saab gown in the day—a designer that referenced the couple’s Middle Eastern heritage—and a rose-gold Jenny Packham gown at night, paired with her Cambridge Lover’s Knot tiara.
Below, every time Kate put her regal spin on wedding guest dressing.
