{Restoring Intimacy}

Dear Bride-to-Be: 

When a bride puts her attention mostly on the glamour, glitz and overly romantic “pomp,” it can drown out any intimacy at her wedding and in her relationship. “Weddings are increasingly notable for their amazing lack of intimacy, their evolution into industry,” National Public Radio commentator Jacki Lyden stated in her story, “Spectacle of Matrimony,” leading up to the wedding of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky in the summer of 2010. In our celebrity-driven, appearance-crazed culture, weddings have “evolved into must-haves and appointment-list mega-spectacles,” Lyden continued.

But it’s not impossible, even in large celebrity weddings, to have a beautiful and intimate event when the attention to detail also includes focusing on connections of the heart. Just remember Kate Middleton and Prince William’s wedding the following spring: large and grand, yet you could feel the open-hearted intimacy. It’s all about where you put your attention.

If the wedding-planning swirl takes you away from the heart of your relationship, then take a deep breath—(close your eyes and imagine what it would feel like to breathe love into your heart)—and plan your wedding from that centered, heart-full place. “Where your attention goes, there goes your life.”

Love. Listen. Let go.

…with love from Cornelia


(Above text excerpted from my new book, The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride {Volume One} For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding. Available on Amazon.com)

{Couture Brides & You}

Claudia Schiffer in
Chanel Haute Couture 1994

Dear Bride-to-Be: 
“The perfect wedding dress,” explained Eleanor Thompson in The Wedding Dress: The 50 Designs That Changed the Course of Bridal Fashion, “is not only a dream for a bride but often for designers, too—a chance to realize their conceptual objectives and express the highest levels of their craft.” The author explores show-stopping one-off gowns “designed for the runway rather than the church aisle” that became the design touchstone of a particular era.

A recent article in Vogue Daily, “Fashion’s Most Outrageous Couture Brides,” becomes a visual walk along decades of fashion catwalks to show how “haute couture exists somewhere in its own otherworldly sphere, which lies between tradition and experimentation.”

Yves St, Laurent
Haute Couture 2000

All this to say that in the immensely creative spirit of a famous couturier in Paris or Milan or London lives the “origin design” of your wedding gown! Bits and pieces of inspiration from these sometimes outrageous designs all trickle down to the rest of the wedding world—showrooms, shops, salons—and in the misty swirl of white silks and laces and fairy tales, you find your perfect dress!

Whatever you are wearing on your wedding day—a designer gown or something borrowed from your best friend—add your own heart-full magic and goddess vibe and be a vision of beauty in your own right!

Love. Listen. Let go.

….with love from Cornelia

ps: Bits and pieces of this post borrowed from my just released book, The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride {Volume One} For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding. Available at Amazon.com.

[Images courtesy of VogueDaily]