Publisher's Synopsis
Wedding folklorist and costume historian Cornelia Powell, along with her insightful way of looking at the life of Princess Diana, forms a captivating view into the world of brides and ceremony, of fairy tales and princess myths. "The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride: For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding"-this first volume of irresistible stories-combines bridal mythology, fashion history, goddess legends, royal ceremonies, and a bit of cosmic mystery with the life of the world's most famous celebrity and the ultimate princess bride. The author has a singular perspective on Princess Diana's influence on weddings including their complement of womanly rituals. On the gilded wave following Diana's royal wedding in 1981-reinventing an outdated bridal industry and bringing weddings back into high-style-Cornelia created a store for the new woman emerging that decade...a design haven for this "grown-up bride." And her invitation over the years to all those brides-to-be, "don't settle for being a princess for a day, be a goddess for a lifetime," shapes the heart of this book. Called "such an intimate experience from which the reader emerges transformed," the book wraps its narrative inside the heart-opening legacy of an archetypal princess who changed our notion of 'happily ever after', who ended the myth of the fairy-tale bride, and who opened a tender pathway to love for those she left behind.
