The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own. – “Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business! – Selina would stare when she heard of it.” – But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.
– Jane Austen
Emma, Chapter 55. The novel’s final paragraph is devoted to a humorous and satirical dig at the pretentious, social climbing Mrs. Elton. She is not among the “true friends” invited to Knightley and Emma’s wedding. But it doesn’t stop her and her celebrant husband criticizing it as something “shabby” and “pitiful.” She comments on the inferiority of the occasion compared to her own big day and hits at the lack of satin and lace. One can imagine how gaudy her own nuptials were. It is an irony for a clergyman, who wanted to marry Emma at one stage, and his wife to engage in this kind of bitchy gossip. But seeing that it is Mr. and Mrs. Elton, is it that surprising?