- You guys, my first dress fitting was yesterday.
My dress was stuck in London,
and I'm laughing, like,
"Jess, should we go dress shopping,
"or is it going to be here?"
She was like, "You shut your mouth.
"It's going to be here."
[mellow piano music]
- Hello, I'm Jenny Packham,
and I'm in my studio in North London,
where we've been hard at work
making Hilary Duff's wedding dress.
It was the first time we worked with Hilary.
So, the dress is made in a stretch crepe.
It's an ivory shade,
obviously ivory is much softer.
It's got quite a fishtail skirt.
It's got these very, kind of, empowered shoulders.
We call them a saddle shoulder pad,
because they kind of dip down
and sort of come up at the edge.
And then it's got these beautiful cape-like sleeves,
with a split up the front, here,
which kind of almost form an amazing train
at the back of the dress.
The back of the dress is open
from the neck down to the waist.
And then we've got a hundred buttons
coming from the waist all the way down
to the bottom of the hem.
I want Hilary to feel
how I think she wanted to feel in this dress,
from the direction that we had,
which is very modern.
And it's quite a bold look.
And, more than anything,
I want her to feel immensely confident in it.
And it is a very confident look.
[mellow music]
- When Matt proposed to me,
we were living in New York
and I was working on a TV show.
I'd had a very long day,
so he's like, "Let's go on a walk.
"You had a long day.
"Let's just get out and, like,
"chat and catch up,
"and there's this new park I want to take you to."
So we were walking through this park in Dumbo
and it's on the water and it's gorgeous.
And all of a sudden he's like,
"I've been working on something for you.
"You're going to love it."
This is the book that Matthew proposed with.
It's all about our love story,
and it's illustrated with these beautiful sketches
and pictures of us,
and our whole entire story mapped out,
for us to refer back to, I think, as we get older,
but also for our kids to know.
And I get to the very last page
and there's a little piece that I have to lift up.
It was an orange.
We call each other "half orange",
like, "Oh, you're my half orange."
And that's just an inside thing
that no-one would understand,
but it was a little orange sketched on the page.
And I lift it up, and my ring was inside.
I'm going to get really choked up.
It was so sweet.
It was really special and really simple,
which is very much how we are
and how we operate.
Oh my god, I feel extra emotional right now!"
This is my hair for the wedding,
that Nikki has executed perfectly.
I have newly short hair,
and really wanted it off my face
and back behind my ears,
but with a little bit of a wave,
so it has a little bit of texture,
but nothing too curly
and nothing too straight.
I'm going to wear a headpiece
that's very simple and beautiful.
It has little diamonds and pearls on it.
Jennifer Behr makes it.
She makes really fun headbands and hair accessories.
- [Nikki] We really went for that chop.
I love it.
- This is Nikki Lee,
and she is my hair-stylist for many, many years.
I have a high neck to my dress,
and I didn't want, like, hair bunched up.
I love this idea that it's back,
it's off my face.
There is a little bit of texture.
And we actually just cut, what,
another inch, off the back of it this morning,
to make sure it clears that neckline of my gown.
Okay, I'm going to try my dress on,
and I'll see you guys in a minute.
I sat down with my stylist Jessica Paster,
and we went through many, many, many designers.
And we, together, settled on Jenny.
I love it.
I feel, well, one, I feel really comfortable.
And I feel like it's everything that I dreamed of.
The shoulders are so exciting to me.
It's really what I wanted.
It has structure,
but it's clean and simple.
I knew that I wanted something modern,
and something, I don't want to say simple,
it's not simple,
but it's very clean.
This is Jessica Paster, my brilliant stylist.
She knew I didn't want a very big dress,
but I wanted a statement dress,
which I think is this.
Jess was, you know, really the one who was like.
"I know!
"It's got to be Jenny Packham."
- What I love about Jenny is,
I've worked with her many times
and I know that the finished dress
is always going to be magical
and it's going to be beautiful and perfect.
And she cares just as much as I do
about all those little details.
We did love the shoulders,
but we didn't want to go too exaggerated,
because Hilary's very petite.
And those little finishing touches.
The buttons, we wanted to make sure that we had buttons.
But yes, it was all in the details of this beautiful dress.
- The end result of what we came up with
with Jenny and my gown,
is exactly how I wanted him to see me,
I think, how he would envision
what I would look like as a bride.
You know, not some, like, big, pouffy pleated thing.
Like, it would be very, like, gorgeous,
but toned down.
There is a sweet little embroidery
with our initials.
There's a M and an H,
and then the date of our wedding.
And over here, there's initials for our kids.
There's Luca and Banks.
And they're part of our ceremony.
And, obviously, the biggest part of our life.
Maybe, someday, Banks will want to wear my dress.
And she can add to it.
Jenny was kind enough to make Banksie's little dress, too.
And it's the cutest thing I've ever seen.
It's pretty similar to my color.
She has a little umpire waist, with a pink velvet ribbon.
And this giant bow in the back actually crushes my soul,
it's so sweet.
She had a little fitting yesterday.
She's only 14 months old,
but she was like fluffing the sleeves
and she was, like, she just kept bouncing up and down.
It was so cute.
- What's wonderful about doing fittings
is you find little things that you can make perfect,
and fix, to make perfect.
We're going to be doing alterations
from now until the day before.
- So, probably, like, two more times.
- Three more. - Three more times!
- Maybe four.
- I'm obsessed with my arms.
They go all the way down to the ground,
and they kind of follow the line of my train.
And then I fly out of my own reception
to my hotel room,
to go to sleep [chuckling]
I think Matt and I are most looking forward
to saying our vows to one another.
Writing my vows was the hardest thing I've ever done.
Honestly.
It's hard to
have, you know,
five minutes to tell someone all that they mean to you,
and all the things that you love about them,
and why, and, you know, what it means moving forward,
you know, to make this kind of commitment.
It was really hard.
You know, marriage is such a huge commitment,
and marriage is not always easy.
And I think sometimes getting to remember the specific day
where we said these specific things,
throughout the course of our lifetime.
Things like the dress,
and handwritten vows,
and all of those other tokens of your love
and your dedication and your promise.
Can everyone just show up now?
Let's do this.
I'm dressed, I'm ready to go.
[mellow music]