Coronation Street star Dolly-Rose Campbell has shared the link a famous Manchester drag queen has to her soap wedding as Gemma Winter prepares to walk down the aisle. The actress, who has played Gemma in the Iong-running ITV show since 2014, said it's an 'honour' to a bride in Corrie after growing up watching the soap.
Next week, Gemma and Chesney Brown will tie the knot in front of their family and friends following a five-year-old romance that has been a series of ups and downs. From the high of giving birth to quads on a cable car to the lows of struggling to make ends meet as a family of seven.
But when the wedding day finally arrives, in typical Gemma fashion, the mum-of-four has made sure that all eyes will be on her with an epic wedding gown.
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In brand new images released ahead of the scenes airing, Dolly can be seen sporting Gemma's wedding attire - an impressive two-metre wide dress, with a stunning seven-metre long train and complete with fairy lights.
The dress has 125 metres of tiny fairy lights on wire and the lights on the train are activated by a remote control. There are approximately 10,000 stones all individually glued on by hand and the dress took over 200 hours to make. In addition, the train is seven metres long, and Corrie revealed Dolly wanted it even longer, but joked she had to be reined in.
On-screen, Gemma has bought a charity shop dress which has been dyed and customised by her pal, seamstress Izzy Armstrong, played by Cherylee Houston. However, in reality, the huge jaw-dropping orange wedding gown has been co-designed and made by drag queen and fashion designer Liquorice Black.
Famous for their stunning unique creations for shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, Liquorice Black, whose real name is John Roberts, has 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.
"I had big, big ideas for what I wanted for Gemma's dress and discussing it with the costume department, the thing that kept coming up was where are we going to get something like that from?" Dolly said when discussing the design of the dress with the Manchester Evening News and other press.
"And I knew of Liquorice Black from going to their studio a few years ago and seeing the costumes they were making so I said I do know of someone who can make this, but I don't think they'll do it because they're really busy. But, I met with him and he agreed. His grandmother was a fan of the show so I think that may have done some of the persuading before me." She added: "To get him to do it, I was overjoyed."
But when the dress is finally seen on-screen, there's a hidden detail that viewers won't know about as Dolly revealed: "The dress was two metres wide and the veil was seven metres so the veil actually attached to the back of the dress. So there was a veil that came from the hair and there was another one that was attached to the dress so that could come off and I wasn't wearing that all the time.
"But because the skirt of the dress was two metres wide, we found that when the director wanted to do two-shot, with two actors in shot, he couldn't do it because there wasn't enough room for two people within the frame of the camera. So, Liquorice made us a smaller one as well, like a mini-skirt dress, so we could use it for close-ups. We never see the little one, just the big one but in the close-ups, I have got the smaller one on."
Dolly also revealed the reaction of some of the cast and crew on the day of filming. "A few of the few had seen it but none of the cast had seen it. I think maybe Ryan Russell [Michael Bailey] was the only one who had seen it because he was having a costume fitting at the same time as I was trying it on.
But nobody else had seen it in all its orange glory and I didn't wear it until we are actually inside the church so nobody could see it but Barbara [Knox - who plays Rita Tanner] loved it. I was really surprised. I thought she might think it was a bit silly but she thought it was perfect for Gemma. She thought it was really glamorous and perfect so I was happy."
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