BRIAN MELTON LIFESTYLE JOURNALIST

The cool, late mid-May evening draws to a close at Ireland’s Ballyfin Demesne, a lavish 19th century late-Georgian estate hotel. Two refined ladies, clutching crystal sherry glasses, creak open the tall oak front doors for a last look at the lushly groomed grounds before retiring. Suddenly, they stop chattering. A flickering white shape shimmers at the foot of the park. Is that … can it be … is there something floating out there, clad in a full-length Napoleonic cape? One of the women gasps.

“I drove the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse.” There, I said it. And I’m going to keep saying it, even when I’m rocking on the porch at the old folks home. It’s like saying, “I had lunch with Paul McCartney.” There’s no possible response other than, “You WHAAAAT?”

Today’s wedding celebrations come in a dazzling variety of styles but can be roughly lumped into three categories: insufferably traditional, casually freewheeling or wild-eyed hillbilly tailgate. And despite the best intentions, many weddings might devolve to encompass all three styles in approximately the same sequence, depending on the availability of free celebratory hooch.

Like most cities, London consists of villages that gradually coalesced into towns and then reached critical mass. Unlike most cities, London’s villages have cool, evocative names — Spitalfields, Knightsbridge, Shepherd’s Bush and so on. But have they kept their charm, too?

By and large, automotive press releases are pretty stolid affairs. So when you encounter one spattered with words like “seductive” and “erotic tingle” to describe a new offering, you tend to sit up and take notice.