{Mothers, Daughters and Weddings}

Dear Bride-to-Be: 

I thought you’d enjoy my article published in the fall issue of Season Magazine. Click here to read it from the online magazine...and I’ve reprinted it below. ’Tis an excerpt 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.

Mothers, Daughters and Weddings

Historically, weddings reflect changes within a culture. And perhaps no relationship is more affected than that of mothers and daughters. It was not long ago (when brides were typically young women not yet out of the “family nest”) that mothers orchestrated the whole affair. But today most brides are independent women who plan their own wedding—only sometimes with their mother’s assistance.

Nevertheless, weddings can still offer the possibility for mothers and daughters to deepen or restore their connection with each other—especially by participating in shared activities that have the quality of ritual. Many years ago this may have been creating the bridal gown together or stitching trousseau linens for the bride’s new home, offering opportunities to chat about life and love and what the future may bring. Today it could be a joint outing to try on dresses. (And if it’s to deepen relationships, I advise leaving judgments at home and taking one’s most diplomatic self along!)

Fashion designer Vera Wang has become an expert on weddings. Not just because she’s designed thousands of bridal gowns—and attended almost as many ceremonies—but also because of her keen observation of relationships. So her take on mothers is worth noting:

Each parent has his or her own distinct part to play. The most complex and challenging relationship, however, is often that of mother and daughter. Differences in style, vision and expectation can begin with the gown and end at the reception, with every issue in between fair game for controversy. A wedding can unleash torrents of emotion, and a bride must balance her own need for control with her mother’s sense of involvement. Sometimes fashion can even become an excuse for unexpressed issues.

The late designer Oscar de la Renta, who had been present for many mother-daughter gatherings in his bridal studio, had “gentlemanly” thoughts about mothers when asked who a bride should bring with her on a shopping excursion:

It would be cruel not to bring your mother along. The wedding is almost as important to the mother as it is to the bride. But brides should prepare their mothers for what they are thinking of wearing. The mother always has a notion of what she wants her daughter to look like, but the daughter is a woman now and she wants to look like one. If I feel like the bride is holding back on choosing something she really wants because she doesn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings, I ask the mother if I can talk to the bride alone.

I recall those daughter-mother encounters in my former shop; some tender, some extremely tense, some remarkably both. At times it was as though I was watching each woman relive her life in an emotional time-lapse montage. A wedding becomes more of a pleasure and a blessing when we remember it’s a pivotal rite-of-passage for both daughter and mother. 
Try a little tenderness.~

[Excerpted from my new book: The End of theFairy-Tale Bride {Volume One} For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescuedthe Great White Wedding.]

[Mother and daughter photo courtesy of BHLDN]

{A Meandering Path}

Dear Bride-to-Be: 

I always find my customers and audiences curious about the origin of wedding rituals: tossing the garter; exchanging rings; the “something old, something new” rhyme; the bride’s bouquet. These are rituals and traditions so familiar, even comforting, that we’ve accepted them into our modern celebrations—yet a mystery remains.

Their origins are hazy; different societies added different meanings and their practice usually took a meandering path through the centuries, making some hard to trace. Wedding traditions, as author Carol McD. Wallace shares, have “complicated roots.” That’s why I consider wedding rituals come from sacred legends or a kind of fairy tale: folklore from our heritage revealing itself a bit mysteriously.

Whatever rituals and traditions you use in your wedding ceremony—whether in a gilded cathedral or grand synagogue, on some lofty mountaintop or in a serene garden—choose ones that touch your heart, light up your relationship, and move you to deeper expressions of love.

Love. Listen. Let go.

….with love from Cornelia

[This is excerpted from my new book, The End ofthe Fairy-Tale Bride {Volume One} For Better or Worse, How Princess DianaRescued the Great White Wedding.]

[Photograph courtesy of Vogue.]

{Breathe, Smile and Go Slowly}

Dear Bride-to-Be: 

“To be ‘on edge,’ you are literally not centered—not being in your spiritual center,” poet Carrie Latet once said. Planning a wedding can be one of the most “on edge” times. With all the commercial hype, canned traditions, and tantalizing nonsense out there, it’s an extra daunting time for the bride and/or the mother of one doing the planning.

The wise Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh prompts us: “Breathe, smile and go slowly.” This is a perfect mantra for busy brides…especially when you want to stay heart-centered and lovingly connected with your beloved.

Whether we’re planning a wedding, a trip, a charity ball, or what’s for dinner, we can all use support in slowing down, relaxing, and bringing ease to our bodies, mind and spirit. It just makes us happier! So take a deep, slow, smiling breath…and see how it feels. Mmmmm.

Love. Listen. Let go.

….with love from Cornelia

ps: This is an excerpt from my new book, The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride {VolumeOne} For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding. Do you have your copy?

[Photograph courtesy of Vogue]

{Love & English Teacups!}

Dear Bride-to-Be: 

With the popularity of Downton Abbey, all things charmingly vintage and elegantly English have a renewed appeal. (And for some us, such charm never went out of fashion!) I recently met a delightful woman at a wedding event who has a clever new business; she rents out “vintage mismatched fine china” for special events—like for your bridesmaid luncheon or wedding reception. Vanessa Gilbreath is English, ‘natch, and the treasures you can rent are from sets of beautiful china she inherited from her mother, grandmother and great-aunt ... all reminiscent of English flower gardens.

Like a lot of people who watched Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding and were inspired by the bride’s bouquet or lace-trimmed gown or veil or serene bearing, Vanessa’s idea for her Vintage English Teacup business was also inspired by this splendid yet intimate royal wedding. (And the table designs that can be created with Vanessa’s plates and teacups and other pretty things are something I’m sure Duchess Catherine would love!) 

Wherever your inspiration comes from for your wedding, be sure to include the elegance and beauty that calls forth your delicious imagination as well as your royally open heart!

Love. Listen. Let go.
....with love from Cornelia

[Images from Vintage English Teacup website]

{Bring Intimacy Back to Weddings}

Dear Bride-to-Be: 

“Weddings are increasingly notable for their amazing lack of intimacy, their evolution into industry,” commentator Jacki Lyden wrote in a report for NPR several years ago. And in our overly-commercialized, up-noised, garish culture, I share this idea over and over in an attempt to urge couples to “look inside” and follow their hearts first when planning their wedding.

In my book for same-sex couples (The Handkerchief Has Been Thrown!—just re-published in print form), I remind the reader of this dilemma. Suggesting ways to return intimacy to the wedding celebration, I encourage gay and lesbian couples to not just follow the fashion of “traditional” weddings, but to set a new standard inspiring all ceremonies to be more real and from the heart.

Unfortunately, Bridal Expos—those big gatherings that bring wedding vendors together with potential brides, grooms and assorted entourages—tend to boost the commercial, big-sexy-party aspect of modern weddings. (I was invited to have a book signing at a first-of-its-kind Same-Sex Wedding Expo recently. Aaaargh!! The epitome of “lack of intimacy.” Please guys, you can do better!)

Whether you’re marrying a man or a woman; whether your wedding is teensy-tiny or ballroom huge; whether you’re on a mountaintop or in a grand cathedral, you may want to hear what journalist S. Bryan Lowder has to say:  “I’m a gay man who wants to get married. But how do I have a wedding that’s not so … straight?” In other words, you don’t have to copy-cat the matchy-matchy, ho-hum aesthetic of many mainstream weddings—trends that have squeezed all the depth and intimacy out of the ceremony and celebratory festivities.

So, planning a wedding? Just don’t forget to bring your good taste, good sense, and especially your good heart along with you!

Love. Listen. Let go.

…with love from Cornelia

[Couples photograph: Courtesy of Martha Stewart Weddings]

The Handkerchief Has Been Thrown! 

Something Old & Something New for Same-Sex Couples 

is available on Amazon.

{Princesses, Heiresses and Weddings}

Dear Bride-to-Be: 

I thought you’d enjoy my article published in the summer issue of Season Magazine. Click here to read it from the online magazine...and I’ve reprinted it below. ’Tis an excerpt 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.

Princesses, Heiresses and Weddings

“We knew that we wanted Diana to have a large bouquet,” explained her gown designers David and Elizabeth Emanuel. “The scale of the dress meant that a small one would have simply disappeared.” With the universal appeal of Princess Diana’s shimmering wedding in the summer of 1981, over-sized, shower-style bridal bouquets became the fashion. (Of course, most things in the glitzy, high-flying ‘80s were on a grander scale!)

Almost a hundred years earlier, Princess May of Teck (who became Queen Mary, Prince Charles’ great-grandmother), started a similar trend when she carried a huge, cascading bouquet for her 1893 wedding to the future King George V. It was called “a modern touch” because its “shape had only recently ousted the posy,” shared historian Ann Monsarrat. The 19^th century English journal Manners for Women attributed this “extravagant fashion to the influx of heiresses from the New World into British society through marriage.” These were daughters of the nouveau riche of the Gilded Age who took their fathers’ immense wealth abroad between the 1870s and early1920s to marry cash-strapped noblemen, like the character of Cora Crawley on Downton Abbey. They not only rescued a way of life for the British aristocracy—at least for a few years—but also lent their opulent taste to wedding celebrations.

Charles Frederick Worth, an Englishman who set up shop in Paris, became the father of modern couture—and a favorite designer of these rich American girls who in turn became famous for their expensive Worth wardrobes and diamond tiaras. They spent thousands every season at his salon and when the time came, ordered a dazzling wedding gown and fancy trousseau. Consuelo Vanderbilt, Jennie Jerome and Frances Ellen Work (Princess Diana’s maternal great-grandmother) were three of those nearly 500 heiresses from America who put their glittering mark on weddings.

During this time most British princess brides followed Queen Victoria’s lead and, instead of wearing one of the many diamond tiaras at their disposal, opted for the more sentimental choice of an elaborate, yet rather humble, bridal crown made of wax orange blossoms. However, many of the American heiress brides, more into opulence than sentiment, wore diamond tiaras—usually a gift from their father. 

Perhaps to make a proclamation all their own, several Windsor brides of the 20^th century (namely Princesses Marina, Elizabeth, Margaret and Anne) also broke with the orange blossom tradition and chose diamonds for their hair—large, old, spectacular ones. So for her wedding, Lady Diana followed suit by wearing the Spencer family tiara: a whimsical floral design in gold, silver and heirloom diamonds. (And as far as I could tell, there was not an orange blossom in sight!)

Weddings have always been a time to dress up, make a statement and dress like a princess. As author Carol McD. Wallace shared: “If a wedding isn’t the ultimate chance to show off, what exactly is it?” ~