In many ways, Enola Holmes 3 is a tale of two wedding dresses.
Early on in the film — now streaming on Netflix — Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) dons a lace number, complete with a tightly braided bun and cascading veil, as she dashes off to wed Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge). There’s plenty of nagging doubt ringing in her head — not about her husband-to-be, but about the idea of potentially losing her independence and the career she’s worked so hard to build.
One failed wedding ceremony, a kidnapping scheme, and several moving revelations later, Enola and Tewkesbury tie the knot on a cliffside in Malta. This time, the detective’s hair is a waterfall of curls, she’s wearing a simple piece of lace in lieu of a veil, and she’s swapped her formal gown for a flowing, off-the-shoulder dress.
“At the beginning of each Enola film, I sent [costume designer] Consolata Boyle a deck of three or four main hero looks,” Brown says. “For the first wedding, I always knew I wanted it to be a lace dress, I knew I wanted there to be an opening at the bottom, and I knew that the veil and train needed to be really long.”
As hair and makeup artist Sian Wilson puts it, Enola’s first wedding look reveals that she is “giving herself over” to Tewkesbury. “She’s allowed Lady Tewkesbury’s housemaids to do her hair,” Wilson notes. “It felt like she was saying, ‘I'll do it properly for him and his family.’”
Not long after Enola puts on her formal dress, she tears it off piece by piece so she can take down a potential assassin, all while standing on top of a moving carriage. “She’s quite constrained in that wedding dress,” Boyle tells Tudum. “When she’s on top of the coach, the veil comes flying off, she tumbles off the carriage, her little crinoline goes west, and then she’s just in the simplicity of the dress itself.”
As the film progresses, Enola learns to express what she really needs for her future. She tells Tewkesbury she wants to marry him but does not want to lead the conventional life of a lady. She’d also like to keep her last name. Her betrothed happily agrees, and the two tie the knot in a simple, intimate wedding, throwing stuffy tradition out the window.
Both of their final wedding looks reflect this pivotal shift. Tewkesbury’s dark, formal wardrobe is replaced by soft, pale grey linens, and Enola’s wedding dress was inspired by Herbert James Draper’s1893 oil painting, Go, Lovely Rose! Tell Her That Wastes Her Time and Mine, which features a young woman in a comfortable, loose-fitting silk dress.
“I wanted it to feel Grecian, to feel like it's kind of melting off of her,” Brown says. “It's just this beautiful, effortless look that feels the most like Enola.” Boyle designed the dress and went with a “small, simple, understated” piece of lace for Enola’s head piece, which was sourced in Malta.
“The dress was made with lightweight silk so that it would blow,” the costume designer explains. “There was a simple silk belt keeping the volume of the dress’s fullness tight around Millie’s waist.”
Brown was so pleased with the end result that she added the dress to her personal collection. “Jake [Bongiovi] said, ‘You are not going home with this.’ I said, ‘I absolutely am, and you’re not going to tell anyone.’ The problem is he’s my husband, but he’s also producer on the movie, so I have to sometimes swear him to secrecy. I said, ‘You cannot tell anyone I've done this.’ … They wound up finding out [anyway].”
As Bongiovi remembers it: “Millie came out of the car wearing that final wedding dress, and it looked so incredible. All the pieces looked absolutely stunning, but the final one, Millie said, ‘I’m keeping this. I can’t not keep this. It’s so beautiful, I’d wear this to any night out that I could because of the love and care that went into each stitch.’”
To create Brown’s makeup look, Wilson used Suqqu for foundation, Iridescent Izzy Cheeky Pop Blush Stick for her cheeks, Vieve lip liner (in the shade Aphrodite with a mix of Brat), and Makeup by Mario’s Master Mattes, which is her go-to eyeshadow palette for Enola’s everyday look. She also added a touch of Florence by Mills’ clear gloss.
Enola’s decision to wear her hair loose comes with a strong message. “At that time, adult women would never be seen outside with their hair down if they were from higher society,” Wilson notes. “Enola bucks that trend. It’s just a lovely free look. I wanted her to look really excited at the end with a flushed cheek.”
(For fans who want to recreate those curls, Wilson suggests using a hair wand to pick up sections of hair with different thicknesses — don’t worry if they’re uneven! — and create loose waves. To add an extra Enola touch, make a middle part, put your hair half up, half down, allow some pieces to fall in the front, and tie a ribbon in the back.)
When it came to jewelry, Brown tracked down the exact ring that she wanted Enola to wear for her wedding. Dubbed a “posy ring,” the band was typically used in the 1800s for Maltese weddings and featured a special engraving inside. The actor chose the word “Loyalty” for Enola’s inscription. “Even though the camera wouldn’t see it, I knew that I wanted it to feel like Enola and Tewkesbury,” Brown says. “It’s a beautiful homage to the place that we’re filming in.”
The crew shot the cliffside wedding in Majjistral Nature and History Park, with sweeping views of the Mediterranean Sea. “It was an amazing day,” Boyle says. “Obviously, the heat was intense, but the feeling of literally being over the sea and the closeness to the elements — the sky, the sea, the earth — and the two of them there. It was wondrous.”
Adds Wilson, “Louis and Millie are so connected as actors, they were so sweet. There were a lot of people around to monitor getting really quite emotional.”
