Julie Andrews' Romantic 1959 Wedding Dress Was Made By An Unlikely Source

There are movies that we love, and then there are movies that become embedded in the cultural zeitgeist and hit us right in the heart. Julie Andrews is breathing rare air as an actor who has more than one such film to her credit. "The Sound of Music" and "Mary Poppins," for examples, have dazzled generations of audiences. But it wasn't only Andrews' movies that delivered that fairy tale dreaminess. She married set and costume designer Tony Walton in May 1959 in beautiful Surrey, England, and get this: Walton designed her wedding dress. While most brides would hesitate to trust their husbands-to-be with the hors d'oeuvres, Andrews charged Walton with the pièce de résistance. He tackled the task beautifully, because his bride looked stunning in her sleeved ballgown, embroidered with floral appliqués — and leave it to Andrews to showcase how to style a pixie cut for every occasion.

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The two met as theater kids in 1948, became pen pals, and got engaged 11 years later. "We looked at each other and smiled, and I honestly don't know how it came about, but one of us whispered to the other, 'We should get married soon,'" Andrews wrote in her memoir "Home," as reported by Tatler. And when Disney snagged Andrews for "Mary Poppins," Walton came with to design the costumes. The couple would have one daughter, Emma, in 1962. Thanks in large part to Walton's gorgeous design, his and Andrews' wedding snaps are some of those throwback pics from Old Hollywood star weddings that are beyond captivating.

Julie Andrews and Tony Walton divorced in 1968 after nine years of marriage, their romantic union fractured by distance and burgeoning careers. Andrews told Woman's Day in December 2019, "Tony and I had known each other since I was 12 or 13, and it was a great friendship, and it still is. That has never wavered ... I did feel I'd failed at [marriage] miserably and blamed myself for a great deal. Although I think it probably was a little bit of both [of us]." All these years later, Andrews could probably offer advice on how to work through the grieving process of a divorce.

Andrews' love story didn't end there, though. She married director Blake Edwards ("Breakfast at Tiffany's") in a private ceremony at her home in November 1969. The pair met in passing in 1959 and reconnected years later. In that same Woman's Day interview, Andrews said about Edwards, "I felt he was the most charismatic and interesting fellow I'd ever met, and there's no doubt that to this day I don't think I'll ever find anybody quite like him. He was unbelievably terrific." Still, Andrews acknowledged what anyone who's ever been in a long-term relationship can attest to: Good doesn't mean necessarily easy. She told Vanity Fair for an October 2019 article, "Marriage is a big up-and-down graph. It's a wondrous thing, but it's probably the hardest work I've ever done, I think." Andrews and Edwards were married for 41 years until Edwards died in 2010.