Linkage
Article based on a forthcoming book about the wedding industry. Interesting. I mean, I know all about the invention of 'tradition', but I shouldn't assume that eny fule no this. I also like that the writer is not just condemning the 'Bridezilla' (though not actually going into, here, about how demeaning a stereotype of women it is - maybe in the book?):
what appeared to me to be being expressed in the vilification of the Bridezilla was a much wider ambivalence among the general public over the direction weddings were taking.
And, on [phenomenon] expressing wider concerns about stuff happening in society, see also this article on why children are no longer playing out unsupervised and the almost subtextual hints that adults have a sense of the world as a big dangerous place for themselves.
On far more intrepid mindsets, a lovely piece by William Dalrymple on great early Victorian travel writer Fanny Parkes, which touches far too fleetingly upon another women of her totem, Iris Portal.
Nice piece by Barbara Gowdy: Sadly, more and more of today's readers crave the emotional hit of getting fact with their fiction.