#ceremony-pageantry

#ceremony-pageantry

The parade is slated to step off at 2 p.m., with thousands of pipers, dancers and spectators expected to pack a roughly ten-block route.

We were among the thousands of people who helped bid them goodbye in a Roman amphitheater in Verona, Italy, on Sunday, with a ceremony that was mostly sentimental but punctuated by rousing bursts of lights, confetti and electropop music. The closing ceremony echoed some of the pomp and circumstance of its opening counterpart 16 days earlier: the athletes' Parade of Nations, the raising of flags,

Winter's company, Artistry in Motion, also makes confetti for rock concerts, movies, political conventions and the Olympics. But the annual blizzard of color falling onto the field at the end of each Super Bowl is probably what he's best known for.It certainly is what he's most likely to get asked about at dinner parties. "It's become an iconic moment," Winter marvels, sitting in his Northridge, California, office and confetti factory.

This was the Trial of the Pyx - an ancient ceremony that is still, in every sense, a proper legal process. Held annually, it exists to answer a simple question - is the coin in your pocket good and true? As Master of the Royal Mint, the Chancellor is technically in the dock. If the Mint were found guilty, m'Lord, of fiddling the figures, the responsibility would be hers.

My former life as a lawyer required accounting for time in six-minute increments, sometimes confronting the fact that I'd derailed and taken way too long to research something that turned out to be the wrong question. Something similar happened here when I looked up and realized I'd lost 30 minutes scouring wedding related message boards to figure out how one would obtain a suit in his exact size without paying for it.