THE ANATOMY OF A 'VOGUE' WEDDING

A wedding is a momentous occasion in any person's life. Some weddings, however, are more special than others — those being the ones covered by Vogue.
What separates a civilian wedding from one worthy of the fashion bible's attention? Here are some questions to get you started: Were one or more of the Courtin-Clarins sisters in attendance? Was the bride's veil longer than her entire body? Did she arrive at the ceremony by boat? Did Snoop Dogg surprise guests with a performance? Was Anna Wintour the mother of the groom? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then the wedding has earned the right to immortality in the annals of Vogue's aspirational wedding column, conveniently available online for all to browse.
In order to understand the distinctive characteristics of a Vogue wedding, we analyzed the 57 ceremonies profiled by the title since September 2010. Of this group, only two weddings featured a same-sex couple (those of Coach Creative Director Stuart Vevers and Joseph Altuzarra, respectively) and only eight weddings look place outside of Europe and the U.S. There are lot of Brits and Italians having fancy weddings, apparently, and Vogue is on the case.
To simplify the project, we relied only on information included in the wedding profiles. These all varied in coverage and often did not make mention of every notable guest or family member that could have impacted Vogue's decision to cover the event in the first place. We also skipped weddings that were covered by the magazine but did not include interviews or access to personal images — the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's wedding, for example.
Enough preamble. On to the cold, hard, lace-trimmed facts.
THE BRIDES
Who are these women and how do they get chosen for such an auspicious profile? Sometimes the piece itself provides plenty of justification. Fashion entrepreneur and presidential granddaughter Lauren Bush's wedding to David Lauren, son of Ralph, is a match made in Vogue heaven, no question. But sometimes the bride is an "Icelandic former model" and the reason for coverage is a bit murkier. Of the weddings we examined, 13 brides were fashion, jewelry or furniture designers and six were models. Eighteen worked in some kind of creative field, from filmmaking to writing; four worked in PR or marketing; four worked in finance; three were in business development; two were stylists; one was a lawyer and four had no discernible occupation.
Eight people featured worked at Vogue or Vogue UK, either currently or previously, and two people were related to someone on staff — proving that working in the fashion industry or at Vogue is a big reason that couples get chosen. See former Vogue market assistant Mollie Ruprecht's three day wedding (#thebattwedding) in St. Barts, above.
THE DESIGNER GOWNS
The Vogue bride has extremely high tastes, of course. With the exception of a few brides who borrowed from mothers or designed dresses in partnership with independent labels, most wore haute couture or runway gowns by designers like Alice Temperely or Tom Ford. And usually, one designer gown is not enough: 19 brides changed into another dress for the reception and six brides wore more than three high-end dresses over the course of the wedding festivities.
The most popular designer was Valentino, followed by Giambattista Valli and Oscar de la Renta. Dolce & Gabbana and Olivier Theyskens ranked next. (You may recall Lauren Santo Domingo's Theyskens-designed gown that famously appeared in the Sept. 2008 issue of Vogue.) Fabiola Beracasa — whose wedding Riccardi Tisci called “the best wedding I’ve been to in my life”— wore a custom Givenchy dress that required 1,600 hours of workmanship in the house's haute couture atelier (see above).
THE DESIGNER-AS-GUEST
Since designer gowns are a moot point at this level, the distinguishing mark of a truly sophisticated wedding is securing the designer's attendance as a guest — and 21 brides were lucky enough to pull it off. Examples include Molly Fishkin, whose dress was created by close friends Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen (see above), and Elizabeth Cordry, who had an extremely special visit from Oscar de la Renta shortly before he passed away on the day of her marriage (#thismasticmoment) to Anna Wintour's son Charlie Shaffer (see below).

Pope weighs in on divorced Catholics who remarry

Pope Francis declared on Wednesday that divorced Catholics who remarry, as well as their children, deserve better treatment from the church, warning pastors against treating these couples as if they were excommunicated.
Catholic teaching considers divorced Catholics who remarry are living in sin and are not allowed to receive Communion, leaving many of these people feeling shunned by their church.

Pope Francis is greeted by newlyweds during a general audience at the Vatican's Paul VI hall on August 5, 2015. FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Francis' emphasis on mercy in church leadership has raised hope among many such Catholics that he might lift the Communion ban. Catholics who divorce after a church marriage but don't take up a new union, such as a second marriage, can receive Communion.
"Lots of people feel alienated from the church, they don't feel welcome there," Candida Moss, theologian professor at the University of Notre Dame, told CBS News correspondent Don Dahler in September. "But it seems like Francis is saying that the church has to be more progressive, it needs to be more practical and it needs to be more compassionate."
The Vatican this fall is holding a month-long follow-up meeting on family issues, after a similar gathering last year left divorced Catholics who remarry hoping in vain that a quick end to the ban would have resulted from those discussions.
In his latest remarks on divorce, Francis didn't go that far. But he insisted on an attitude change in the church. "How do we take care of those who, following the irreversible failing of their family bond made a new union?" he said.
"People who started a new union after the defeat of their sacramental marriage are not at all excommunicated, and they absolutely must not be treated that way," Francis told pilgrims and tourists at his first general audience after a summer break. "They always belong to the church." The church, he said, must be one of "open doors."
The pope acknowledged that church teaching considers "taking up a new union" after divorce wrong.
"The church knows well that such a situation contradicts the Christian sacrament," of marriage. Still, Francis said, the church must always "seek the well-being and salvation of persons."
Francis wondered how the church can insist that the children of these failed marriage be raised by their parents "with an example of convinced and practiced faith, if we keep them (the parents) far from the community life (of the church) as if they were excommunicated?"
He exhorted pastors "not to add additional weight beyond what the children in this situation have to bear. Unfortunately the numbers of these children and young people are truly great."
In his papacy, Francis has frequently suggested seeing situations through the eyes of others.
"If we look at these new ties with the eyes of young children ... we see ever more the urgency to develop in our community true welcome toward people living in these situations," Francis said.
Other than being widowed, the only possible way for Catholics who marry in the church to remarry is receiving an annulment. That long, complicated process essentially involves examining whether the marriage never existed in the first place. Grounds for annulment include refusal by a spouse to have children.
Previous pontiffs had complained that annulments in some places, notably in the United States, were being granted too liberally.
Francis ended his weekly audience by greetings newlyweds in attendance - brides and grooms in their wedding outfits.