'Marrying Absurd' from 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem' (a Flamingo Sixties Classic)
by Joan Didion describes weddings Las Vegas syle in 1967. A work colleague of mine got married in Vegas and all I could think was what's the point? If you are going to go to all the trouble and I do mean 'trouble' of getting married at least do it as if you mean it. But then, reading this, I realised a lot of people getting married in Vegas do mean it as one bride underage and seven months pregnant sobbed,
'It was just as nice as I hoped and dreamed it would be'
'The Group' by Mary McCarthy (Virago Modern Classics but originally published in 1963) begins with the wedding of Vassar college graduate Kay in 1930's New York attended by the seven other female graduates whose lives the rest of the novel follows.The groups experiences of sex,marriage,motherhood,ambition and career versus family are all as relevant to women as much today as in the 1930s and 1960s.
Discovered on the Withdrawn/For Sale shelf of the wonderful Bishopsgate Institue -
'How We Lived Then-A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War'
by Norman Longmate The chapter entitled 'Cardboard Wedding Cakes' details the hardships and shortages of war time weddings in Britain-a best man suddenly posted elsewhere,'The Sugar (restricted use of) Order of 1940' resulting in cakes made with powdered eggs being iced in chocolate and pet white rabbits slaughtered and passed off as chicken in aspic.
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This is an actual cardboard wedding cake from 1943 
- a highlight of the collection from the Museum of Richmond
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