The End of the Fairy-tale Bride

Book excerpt: 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 On the gilded wave following Diana's royal wedding in 1981—reinventing an outdated bridal industry and bringing weddings back into high-style—Cornelia created a store for the new woman emerging that decade…a design haven for this "grown-up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.