Kate & William - A Royal Wedding

I am so excited that Prince William & Kate Middleton have announced that their wedding will be on the 29th April next year at Westminster Abbey.

I have always felt a great sense of affinity with royal weddings. The Wedding Shop opened its doors for business the same year Charles & Diana got married, I was just eight years old. My father had started a video production company and began by filming weddings. It wasn't long before he was being recommended by Lady Elizabeth Anson who ran a party planning company in London, she also happened to be cousin to the Queen. This led to him filming weddings for the extended royal family and their friends where the Queen, Charles and Diana were in often attendance. Princes William and Harry were pageboys at one such occasion in 1988, both in little knickerbocker outfits. They looked so cute!

My father has a wonderful picture in his private collection of the princes peering into his camera's viewfinder while he shows them how to use it. He was in a very privileged position of seeing the royals behind the scenes enjoying themselves with him filming the whole event, without ever having to worry that it would be leaked to the media or put on YouTube! I can remember as a child the wall in his office was full of pictures of royalty and celebrities. This in turn took him around the world for foreign royalty and celebrities, and sometimes he had a trainee camera girl with him!

At The Wedding Shop we're really excited that it's rumoured she may wear a dress designed by one of two designers we stock in our shop. Jenny Packham and Suzanne Neville are potential designers or she may follow in Autumn Kelly's footsteps, when she married Peter Phillips (Princess Anne's son) and wear a Sassi Holford, which we also stock at The Wedding Shop Colchester!

We are so lucky to have all the top British designers in the country choose our shop as the best one to showcase their designs in Essex and Suffolk. We have built up a fantastic relationship with them over the years and they trust us to look after their dresses and know we can carry out the expert alterations on their very complicated and beautifully constructed gowns.