Wedding mania is so unromantic But some of the wedding excesses that have crept in in recent years make me wonder whether I should laugh or cry. Forget the expensive wedding photographer - apparently, there should also be a "pre-wedding shoot" where the loving couple wear co-ordinated clothes and look cheesily into each other's eyes. What about a Shetland pony hired to carry baskets of confetti? Or the bride who insisted on claret and blue bridesmaids" dresses to match her football-themed wedding? Both are real examples. Not that we can always blame the bride. At one wedding I went to, the bride-to-be put her foot down and banned her future spouse (a usually very sensible man) from having the ring delivered via quadcopter. And before I sound too censorious, I have to hold my hands up. When I got married nine years ago, I got sucked into wedding forums and their weird acronyms (you're never a bride but a B2B, while your future husband is a H2B) and wasted far too much time debating sugared almonds and wedding cars (a purple camper van in the end). Last year, Rowan Williams lamented the change he observed that meant weddings were turned into "massively fantastical" events that left day-to-day married life rather dull by comparison. But then if, like one bride I heard about, you buy an Alfred Angelo Disney dress (yes, these do exist for grown women) and get married in front of Cinderella's castle in Disneyland, then catching the 7.21am in perpetuity afterwards must feel a bit of a drag. The focus on social-media sites like Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook means that people feel they either have to compete, and get themselves into financial trouble - a third of couples admit they got into debt in paying for their wedding - or end up postponing their wedding for years until they have saved up. This has led to some fairly unloving practices, too. "I've noticed a big change," says one bridal shop owner. "The bride will come in and say 'As I'm ordering six bridesmaids" dresses from you, can I have one of them for free?" I'd like to see them going into John Lewis and trying that. Still, she was luckier than another friend, who found in her invitation a blunt attempt to recoup the costs: "On the front of the invite they put their bank account details," she says. "No wedding list; no random 'we don't mind what you give us" hippy thing. No 'could you contribute to our honeymoon?" - just plain 'give us your cash."" It's ironic that in an age when there is finally less pressure on women to measure their worth by their marital status, we fetishise the wedding so much. The day has to be perfect, the outfits immaculate, the scene photogenic - and the photos up on Facebook within minutes. For too many brides and grooms there is no space for the odd, the ugly and the downright funny things that make a wedding truly individual, rather than any so-called theme. At two of the big days I've enjoyed most, I've sewn a bride back into her dress, and helped put out a tablecloth on fire. The best weddings I've been to have been the simplest - and because they're grounded in reality, they tend to make the best marriages, too. Grimms" gory stories still shock It sounds like an ideal Christmas present - the first edition of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales is being published in English for the first time. But those of us who have brought our children up on saccharine Disneyfied stories and films about princesses might want to pause before slipping it into a stocking. When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm wrote their first collection in 1812, they claimed to be preserving authentic German folk tales for posterity. The stories were aimed at adults, not children, so there was plenty of violent material. After your child has snuggled down under the duvet, think carefully before reading the original Rapunzel, where the prince is blinded with thorns for getting our heroine pregnant. Or Cinderella, where the ugly sisters cut off their toes and heels to fit the glass slipper and try not to slip on the blood. But the reviews and sales of the first Grimm tales were disappointing, and the brothers noticed that collections that had done better were aimed at children. So they got rid of the gore (relatively), tweaked the moral endings and their sales soared. Perhaps not so far from Disney after all? Buerk exposes the reality TV lie Last week, I had the surreal experience of switching on Radio 4 to hear those disturbingly powerful words that first alerted the world to the horror of the Ethiopian famine in 1984. "Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night..." At the same time, I glanced at Twitter and found out that the man who spoke them, Michael Buerk, appeared to be marking the 30th anniversary of what became one of the biggest stories of the Eighties by announcing that he was going on the reality show for masochists and bikini-wearers, I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! Truly, I thought, is this the end of days? Buerk, however, has an insouciant attitude about his transformation from homme sérieux to game show show-off. He says he's going to spend his fee on new double glazing (no pious spouting about "charidee" from the man who inspired Band Aid). And he has no deluded hopes about winning: "The audience aren't going to vote for the old bloke with the charity beard. They're going to vote for the girl with the big boobs, aren't they? Yet what is clear is that Buerk has already nailed what the experience is all about. He said he'd asked the advice of his sons, who both work in PR, as to how he should play it. "The absolute consensus is that I mustn't be myself," he said. I have to keep up a pretence of being pleasant, and generally not overbearing. He's teasing, but such "reality" shows are not about revealing the "real" you in the slightest, but a sanitised version - plucky fighter, humble team-player or brave leader. As the old Hollywood axiom has it, if you can fake sincerity, you've got it made.