Wedding train makes longest dress

A 46-YEAR-OLD man from Paphos has claimed that he has made the longest wedding dress in the world, with the train measuring well over a kilometre in length.

Andreas Efstratiou told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that his 1,222 metre-long garment, which he says cost him £12,000 in materials, has broken the Guinness World Record for the world’s longest dress train.

Efstratiou said that he would soon send to the Guinness Book of World Records a note of confirmation signed by the Paphos Mayor so that his new record-length dress (about 18 metres longer than the reigning record) could be officially documented.

At present the official record for the world’s longest dress train stands at 1,203.9 metres. The dress was made by Cindy Predhomme and France Loridan on August 5, 2006 in Caudry, France for Une Semaine Chrono.
Efstratiou said that 8,000 people – 7,000 Cypriots and 1,000 foreigners, mostly British – were present for the unveiling of the dress train on the coastal road of Kato Paphos.

A competition to choose who would model the dress had been held previously, with hundreds of women participating.

A 23-year-old, Katerina, won the competition. On Sunday she emerged from a white limousine and then promenaded down the coastal road to live orchestral music as 50 bridesmaids behind her carried the 1,222 metre-long dress.

The dress, which was not specifically designed for a wedding, is now being kept as a showpiece in Efstratiou’s Paphos store, Green Leaf.

Efstratiou said he has been designing wedding dresses since he was 10.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.