The Magazine · Celebrity Weddings
Lady Kitty Spencer in Rome: five dresses and a Renaissance villa
Princess Diana's niece married in Dolce & Gabbana couture at Villa Aldobrandini in 2021, and made the multi gown wedding mainstream.
In July 2021, Lady Kitty Spencer, niece of Princess Diana, married Michael Lewis at the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati, outside Rome, in what may be the most complete expression of the fashion wedding yet staged. The bride, a Dolce & Gabbana ambassador, wore five couture looks across the celebrations, beginning with a high necked Victorian inspired lace gown for the ceremony, and the house documented the weekend like a collection launch, which in a sense it was.
The five dress thesis
The multi gown wedding existed before Rome, but Kitty Spencer gave it its definitive argument: each dress served a chapter, ceremony, dinner, dancing, each occasion recut in silk. Bridal fashion responded immediately, and the industry has been building around the idea since: main gowns with detachable layers, dedicated evening dresses, and the after party look as a standard category. For real couples the scaled version is everywhere now, one ceremony gown and one dance floor dress, and the two outfit bride is no longer a celebrity phenomenon but a boutique default.
The villa and the format
Villa Aldobrandini, a sixteenth century estate with terraced gardens above Rome, supplied the other half of the template: the historic Italian villa as the wedding's entire world, ceremony on the terraces, dinner among the statuary, no travel between chapters. Italy's villa wedding economy, already thriving, took another visible step up, and British couples remain its most devoted customers, drawn by exactly what the Spencer wedding showcased: architecture that makes styling almost unnecessary.
The human note
Amid the couture, the detail most reported was genealogical: the bride, whose father walked her aunt Diana's path a generation earlier, was walked down the aisle by her brothers. Grand weddings survive on such touches. The lesson travels to any budget: spectacle earns the photographs, but the human choices earn the tears, and a wedding, even one dressed by an atelier, needs both.
