Jennifer Marshall: Marriage an ideal, not a fairy tale

  In America, little girls were glued to the television from before dawn, enthralled by Diana’s dress with its billows of silk taffeta, 10,000 pearls and 25-foot train. To a young girl’s eye, the only blemish of this perfect day was that the bride’s signature feathered hair succumbed to the summer humidity.

  But not even flat bangs could detract from the fairy tale dream of marriage played out with such pomp.

  Nor was the nobility of the moment lost on adults. As ABC’s Ted Koppel commented that evening:

  Today’s marriage between Charles and Diana was … a hugely magnified version of what most of us hope for, the idealized beginning of what is meant to ripen into the perfect partnership of a man and a woman.”