Other forms: pageantries
Pageantry is the grandeur that turns an event into an elaborate spectacle. The long ritual of a new queen's coronation is a good example of pageantry.
In contrast to the simplicity of a small wedding ceremony in a friend's back yard, a grand, expensive wedding might include such pageantry as a parade of bridesmaids in rainbow-colored gowns, followed by a mariachi band and the bride arriving on the back of an elephant. Pageantry comes from pageant, which today is a "showy spectacle or parade," but in Middle English meant "stage or scene of a play."