Royal Flashback of the Day: April 26

The poor Countess of Wessex suffered a nasty fall while riding just a few days before the 2011 wedding of William and Kate, complete with a broken rib and several others badly bruised.

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In hindsight, I like to think of her dress for the pre-wedding dinner as an aesthetic expression of that suffering. It was an expression of something, anyway. The fabulous necklace and earrings she wore of white and yellow diamonds was the best bit, but alas, they seem to have been a loan for the evening from G. Collins & Sons (here's the necklace on their Instagram, as pointed out by Anna from the Countess of Wessex Blog).

Never fear, she was back on form for the wedding proper.

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Looking back at these outfits five years on, some have grown in my esteem, and some have, well, fallen pretty hard. Add this one to that first category. A big royal wedding requires a special outfit; Sophie's Bruce Oldfield couture ensemble interprets that in a luxurious and detailed way but not in an over the top way. It's a crucial distinction, I think.

Or, at least, it is when considering an outfit that one can wear multiple times. Swapping out the hat, she repeated the outfit for Trooping the Colour in 2012 (coincidentally, the Queen repeated her own outfit from the 2011 wedding then too). She did the same thing in 2013 at Sandhurst, using a big brimmed hat. I do not believe we have since seen the red dress repeated, but I am prepared to block it out in case we ever do.