Royal Wedding: Inside the Ceremony With India Hicks, Bridesmaid to Princess Diana
ABC News gets a behind-the-scenes look into the details of a royal wedding.
LONDON, April 18, 2011— -- A royal wedding might look like a scene from a fairy tale, but military precision is the name of the game behind the scenes.
Quite literally not a stone remains unturned: Believe it or not, even the cobblestones outside of Westminster Abbey have been vacuumed.
ABC's Barbara Walters was granted an exclusive interview recently with India Hicks, who was 13 in 1981 when her godfather, Prince Charles, asked her to be his bridesmaid.
Hicks still has her bridesmaids dress. It is almost a replica of Lady Diana's dress.
"It is a relation … same color, same fabric," she told ABC News. "A lot of petticoats, a lot of lace, a lot of bows. Very painful when you're a little tomboy."
Although she didn't like that much at the time, looking back, Hicks said, "Now, I see the romance in it."
So what was Diana wearing on the morning of her wedding day?
"She turned up in a pair of jeans," Hicks said. "I have this lasting impression of Diana with a diamond tiara on top of her head, dressed in jeans below while they fitted the tiara to see what it would look like."
We heard last week that Kate's five-room suite at the Goring Hotel, where she will stay the night before the wedding, has a waterproof flat-screen television.
And it turns out Diana was watching the television as she got dressed.
"She was very intrigued by it," Hicks said. "For her, it was so new to see herself on television. Can you imagine? I mean her whole life going before her eyes and she kept pushing everybody out of the way; move, she'd say."
So what did the little bridesmaid think when she saw Diana in that dress that has become so iconic?
"I thought; a princess. She was the bride; all brides have that sense of being the center of attention," Hicks said. "But she had that star quality."
As bridesmaid, India had the job of managing that famous train that stretched a record-breaking 25 feet.
"The job wasn't going right," Hicks said. But Diana was sympathetic, "and turned round and just said 'Do your best.'"
And so India navigated her way up the aisle in front of a global audience of about 750 million people.
"I was thinking my shoes hurt, they're pinching," Hicks said, "and it was a long way down that red carpet to the altar. But there was an aura about that day."