A Wedding Dress To Remember

Princess Diana's Wedding Dress Designers Chronicle Experience In Book

(CBS)  It was no fairy tale, of course: no happy ending. But not so long ago or far away, when a 20-year old nursery school teacher became a princess, almost no one was more responsible for the magic of that moment, frozen in time, than the two young designers who made the gown she wore, David Emanuel and his wife, Elizabeth.

"I always think of a beautiful butterfly emerging from a chrysalis," Elizabeth says of Princess Diana's wedding gown.

"Looking back she really was a child. She had a beautiful cherubic face," Elizabeth says. Her husband, David, adds, "She would blush. If you mentioned anything she would blush."

Now the Emanuels have published a book——not about the day, but about the dress. Drawn from notes and sketches and photos and remnants of fabric put away 25 years ago, reports CBS News correspondent Richard Roth.

The famous dress really began with the blouse, Elizabeth says.

"Vogue magazine asked us if we had a blouse with a romantic high neckline. We just happened to have one in the studios. We sent it over
We didn't know who it was for," Elizabeth remembers.

"Turns out it was for Diana. She liked the blouse, asked who made it and that's how she came in to us."

Diana Spencer had been dodging the press, only starting to discover what life would be like in the royal spotlight. She came to the Emanuels for something fitting for something important: her first formal appearance with her fiancée, Prince Charles.

According to Elizabeth, Diana tried on a black dress, a "perfect fit" she recalls, that exposed a fair amount of cleavage. "We just didn't think of the repercussions. It was only when it appeared in the press that everybody went, 'Wow,'" Elizabeth says.