A Wedding Dress To Remember

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.

It may have been the evening that began the making of an international icon. It was certainly a moment that changed the Emanuels' lives. Elizabeth took the phone call.

Diana asked the Emanuels to make her wedding dress. "The fact that she asked if we would like to do her dress," Elizabeth pauses, "as if we might say no."

The Emmanuel's studio was a few floors up, on a side street in central London, where they code-named their client Deborah and employed two guards to help keep the design secret.

Outside their former shop, David recalls the scene: "Literally here the pavement was surrounded by photographers, paparazzi guys everywhere, right, and up on the roofs here, all of these they used to be pointing their camera lenses into our windows here."

In all the paperwork they saved, the Emanuels now say, there was never a formal letter from Buckingham Palace: no official commission.

Inspiration came from a conversation with Diana.

And if the palace wasn't interested in what the princess would be wearing, the rest of the world clearly was.

They designed a train 25-feet long with the scale of St. Paul's cathedral in mind.

Creating that drama, though, Elizabeth Emanuel recalls a Diana who seemed left on her own.

"Nobody really came to fittings with her. In the beginning her mom came, and then she would come alone. And I thought, you know, in a way that's quite sad really 'cause most brides come in they bring their mums, their sisters or best friends. She was quite lonely," Elizabeth says.

History records the sad divide between a perfect wedding and that royal marriage. Yet for the Emanuels, their regal fashion accomplishment forever remains a good memory.

Elizabeth says: "I can't think of anything bad. In the three months leading up to the royal wedding and the day of, was the happiest time, the most stressful time, the most incredible time of my life."