Hunter King's Custom Party Dress in “Holiday Touchdown” Wasn't Finished Until an Hour Before Filming (Exclusive)

Hunter King's perfectly sparkly party dress in Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story — a festive film about a family of Chiefs superfans with a side of holiday romance — came right down to the wire.

Costume designer Keith Nielsen and his team were working right up until they had to film the scene, but he tells PEOPLE that doing an "original" rather than buying a dress off the rack was exactly what needed to happen, because nothing in the stores seemed quite right.

And King wholeheartedly agreed.

"We bought a bunch of different ones, and we were like, 'That's cute, or, that's cute,' but I didn't want to do 'cute,'" he told PEOPLE exclusively ahead of the movie's premiere on the Hallmark Channel. "Then almost in a joking way, I was like, 'I've decided to do a Keith original, and Hunter was like, 'I want a Keith original.'"

That was that.

However, due to the extremely tight timeframe, Nielsen had to get to work right away and make magic happen.

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For the scene, where Alana (King) and her budding love interest Derrick (Tyler Hynes) go to a Chiefs party at Arrowhead Stadium, Alana needed a dress that would be the perfect mélange of holiday and Kansas City chic. Nielsen was inspired by an Alice + Olivia dress that had boning in the bodice, which he used as a starting point for Alana's (King's) design.

"I took the top of that piece, and we edited the pattern a little bit," he says. "The reason I liked that boning structure is because the external bones reminded me of stitching on football padding. Then we did basically a full tutu skirt."

Nielson was careful in selecting the fabric because he says he didn't want Alana to "disappear into a sea of red" while in Arrowhead Stadium for this scene, so instead he found this perfect ombré red and gold effect.

"That dress wasn't done until an hour before we were ready to shoot, so it was very stressful," he says. "It was so funny — I'd gone into the office earlier in the day and [my team was] like, 'The zipper's in!' Everybody was on high alert about this dress."

Nielson paired it with gold SJP by Sarah Jessica Parker shoes that had a low heel, because after all, Alana is a "small-town girl" and wouldn't wear a stiletto.

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King's wardrobe also included a vast assortment of coats — fitting for a Christmas movie taking place in the Midwest. One such option is the varsity jacket that she wears at the end of the movie. It was another custom piece that Nielsen created, also in Chiefs colors. This one was predominantly red with golden yellow sleeves.

"I wanted to do a classic wool coat — the Hallmark movie quintessential coat, but then add a sportswear aspect without doing branding," Nielsen describes of how he came up with the design.

What's most exciting about that specific piece, though, is that Nielsen was able to take inspiration from the one-of-a-kind coat and tap local Kansas City artisans to make a very limited run of the coats for sale.

"It's really for the Kansas City super-fans," Nielsen tells PEOPLE. "It's super luxury. I think it's better than the original."

Related: Kansas City Chiefs' Mecole Hardman Jr. Wants to Be an Actor After Hallmark Movie Debut: 'I Really Can Do That' (Exclusive)

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But while King — as well as the rest of the cast — may have been strolling around in what looked like a wintry landscape in their bevy of coats that Nielsen carefully selected, the costume designer points out that the movie was filmed in July, so it was actually quite unpleasant for everyone to be so bundled up.

"You'll see some press stuff out there with Hunter walking around the field in a T-shirt, and that's because we cut all the sleeves off to minimize layers," he says.

Nielsen, who has worked on a number of Hallmark Christmas movies (and is no stranger to having to film some of them in hot weather) says he's learned a few "tricks" for battling the heat when dressing his stars.

"I've ripped out linings of jackets just to lighten the load," he says. "We use a lot of ice packs, but then the thing with the ice packs is then you're sweaty and you're wet. Then of course, I'm always like, 'We need a glove. It finishes the look.' Now your hand is sweating and you can't get it on. It's a lot. But it's all about the fantasy."

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