She was never going to anything but extra on her wedding day and Gemma Winter was a tangerine dream as she walked down the aisle in a giant light-up gown. Gemma met her groom Chesney Brown in a twinkling orange dress hailed as the 'best wedding dress ever.'
Co-designed and made by drag queen and fashion designer Liquorice Black, Gemma's dress, with a seven-metre long train, had 125 metres of tiny fairy lights activated by remote control and approximately 10,000 stones individually glued on by hand. Chesney beamed with pride as his bride walked towards him to the song The Promise by Girls Aloud in Monday's Coronation Street.
The couple, whose friendship blossomed into love after they worked together in Dev Alahan's kebab shop, have had plenty of ups and downs including Gemma going into labour with their quads in a cable car in Llandudno, struggling to make ends meet, and Gemma's twin brother Paul Foreman has been helping them out while hiding the secret that he has been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease.
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But all eyes were on Gemma, played by Dolly-Rose Campbell, as she walked down the aisle in the most extravagant wedding dress Weatherfield has ever seen. She was on the arm of her brother, as he struggled to walk down the aisle, after the pair fell out just before the wedding.
On Twitter @teenamassam exclaimed: "Gemma dressed like a big tangerine…" And @elisjonesx enthused: "Kind of obsessed with Ar Gemma’s wedding dress."
@xViCkIx_said: "Gemma’s dress is just outrageous, yet incredible. I weirdly love it." @magso5 said: "Best wedding dress ever." @Momrocks50 gasped: "OMG I LOVE IT THE DRESS." And @ronan367 applauded: "Gemma walking down the isle to “The Promise” brilliant!"
But other fans were more distracted by another major detail. It has been a running joke amongst viewers that archdeacon Billy Mayhew is rarely seen in a church, so they were thrilled to see him declare Chesney and Gemma man and wife.
@Denlives1 said excitedly: "BILLY IS INSIDE A CHURCH." @ASuperGav tweeted: "Well swipe me with a fly swat and pick me up off the floor. Billy in church (drops dead)." @Greg_Phillips_ joked: "Makes a change to see Billy actually doing some work…" And an amazed @floweroflondon also exclaimed: "Billy's doing some work! In a church!"
Liquorice Black teamed up with Coronation Street's head of costume Alex Hatzar to create the impressive gown which was crafted at Liquorice Black's studio in Manchester. Speaking about the first time she put the dress on, Dolly told the Manchester Evening News and other press: "I was just blown away by the dress. It's an absolute work of art."
She added: "The detail that's gone into is just beyond anything I ever imagined and it was comfortable. Compared to a lot of Gemma's other costumes, because it was made to fit me from scratch, it was comfortable."
Dolly said she was 'overjoyed' to get Liquorice Black, whose real name is John Roberts, involved with the dress and shared some of the inspiration and the process behind the final look. "I based the idea off weddings I had seen as a child because these would have been the weddings Gemma would have seen as a child, growing up in the nineties.
But then, added extra touches such as the fairy lights which were a little bit extra and that's quite Gemma." And on the orange, she revealed: "The colour was the idea of our costume designer Alex. She really wanted it to be orange because it's the most Chesney colour which we all found so funny. We agreed!"
And on how they got Liquorice Black involved, Dolly said: "Myself and Alex in costume had lots of discussions about what Gemma would want as her dream dress and had put some ideas together. We decided on orange as a nod to Gemma and Chesney being ginger and also Gemma loves bright colours.
"Liquorice and I have a mutual friend and I had seen an exhibition of their work and knew they had worked on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK so I knew that they would be the best person to make the dress, I was absolutely delighted when they said yes."
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