Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Hang out the bunting, crack open the champagne, start looking for a new hat - there's a new wedding on the horizon.
OK, so the impending nuptials of Labour leader Ed Miliband and Justine Thornton may not have quite the same allure as that of another marriage scheduled for this Spring.
But Paper Monitor wishes to send a telegram of congratulations - not to the happy couple themselves, who have expressed their desire for a low-key ceremony, but to the Doncaster Free Press, which covers Mr Miliband's South Yorkshire constituency and
Today the DFP's London-based rivals follow in its wake. The Sun, tongue deeply embedded in cheek, has prepared a range of Miliband wedding collectibles (tea towel, mug, ashtray) to mark the occasion.
Like other papers, it makes much of the fact that, while Miliband was appointed best man at the marriage of his brother and erstwhile leadership rival David, Ed has not returned the favour.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail channels the spirit of its late columnist Lynda Lee-Potter and peers through its net curtains to sniff haughtily at the civil ceremony.
The wedding will be held at Langer Hall near Nottingham, which advertises itself as a , but which the Mail describes as
The Guardian's Zoe Williams is more generous, dismissing suggestions that the marriage is a political ploy to appease critics of the couple's unwed status. Instead she
Miliband is notoriously counter-suggestible. He only went to the because all his advisers told him not to. Come on, he was speaking fourth. In line-up terms, that makes him Mumford & Sons. At the precise moment that the pressure abates, and even the most rule-bound adviser is saying: "Well, you can't get married now. It looks like an afterthought" - that's when he wants to get married.