Having designed the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding gown and reception attire, Alexander McQueen creative director Sarah Burton is well accustomed to mingling with royalty. 

But today she met with Prince Charles for an occasion where she, rather than one of her creations, took centre stage. 

The Cheshire-born designer was made an Officer of the British Empire for her services to British fashion during an Investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace today after being named in the Queen's 2012 Birthday Honour's List.Our site offers a variety of Beach Wedding Dresses 2012, colorful selection of short or plus size dresses under 100. 

Burton was hand-picked by the Duchess of Cambridge to create her gown for her 2011 wedding to Prince William and was bound by a confidentiality agreement with Buckingham Palace.Freeshipping cute onbridals rural ring set . She told no one but a core group of colleagues who were to assist her in the design, and called upon the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court Palace to assist with the embroidery - whom were not told who the dress they were working on was for. She also created the dress worn by Pippa Middleton the Duchess's sister who served as maid of honour. 

Asked if she would be making any maternity clothes for the Duchess, who has worn Alexander McQueen on numerous additional occasions, Burton laughed and said: ""I hope I will be". 

PA report how she and the Prince: "talked a little about the dress and I said congratulations for the Duke and Duchess, I'm over the moon for them." 

Burton also said: "I think he's got an amazing sense of style and has quite a history with Savile Row and has impeccable taste.What exactly is a formal office dresses for women?" 

Currently pregnant with twins, the 38-year-old took creative control of the Alexander McQueen label after founder Lee McQueen took his own life in 2010, and has been praised for adding a softer,Looking for new collection of wedding dresses or corset and tulle wedding dresses? more feminine dimension to the avant-garde label. 

A charged relationship between mother and child also constitutes the subject of Elsewhere, Richard Russo's nuanced memoir about his lifelong relationship with his emotionally dependent mother. Russo writes about his own class emigration from blue-collar kid to college professor and successful writer; but what he also chronicles in Elsewhere is how his difficult mother came along for the ride figuratively and literally, since she climbed into Russo's rusty Ford Galaxy on his cross-country drive to college. I also loved retired classics professor Charles Rowan Beye's saucy and poignant memoir, My Husband and My Wives. Beye looks back on his long life, including his sequential marriages to two women and, now, a man, and contemplates the cosmic question: "What was that all about?" 

Sometimes the conventional wisdom is truly wise. Katherine Boo's much lauded work of narrative nonfiction, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, crowns my best-of-the-year list.Online shopping for custom made designer china wholesale bridesmaid dresses. Based on three years of "embedded reporting," Boo's account takes readers deep into the richly varied world of a few of the thousands of slum dwellers who live in the shadows of the Mumbai airport and its surrounding luxury hotels. As Boo says in her author's note at the end of the book, the slum dwellers she came to know are "neither mythic nor pathetic," but rather distinguished by their ability to improvise. 

Given the space limitations of lists, many critics — myself included — dislike putting these "best-of-the-year" pieces together; but if this rattling run-through attracts more readers to these extraordinary books, I will close out 2012 contented.