It’s a no-brainer how lucrative the wedding business is—in the United States alone over $72 billion is attributed to the sound of marriage bells each year, and if you want to break it down, that’s $20,000 average event planning budget, 6,200 weddings per day, and over $8 billion spent on wedding gifts per year. But this huge hoopla when it comes to marriage ceremonies was not always the case; in fact, history has a very different account of weddings and it all begins with one act from the 18th century.

In what could be considered a very bad idea, Robert Louis Stevenson trekked through Cevennes, France, among mountains and lower highlands, despite his youthful bad health, aboard a donkey named Modestine. It was the autumn of 1878 and he was many years, half a decade in fact, from the fame of his greatest literary success: Treasure Island. What did lend itself to a towering reputation was his embarking on the traditional grand tour of Victorian gentlemen, which explained his  presence on top of a mountain range in the South of France, and it was no mean feat when he breached one of the highest ranges to make camp at a small clearing. After dining on chocolate, brandy, other delicacies that befit his social status, the budding writer made to kip in the sleep cap he carried with him under the day’s dying sun. But instead of embarking onto unforeseen travels in his dreams, his sleep was interrupted shortly after midnight.

World War II has a certainly nostalgia to it for Americans (and I’m allowed to say this, as I’m an American) that has nothing to do with the horrors that were experienced all over the globe due to a couple of power hungry men, but all to do with it being “simpler times” in many people’s minds, before the Age of Technology and the great globalization of our world.

The processes of law can be almost like figuring out a new language with little but a book written completely in a dialect you don’t understand, or charting a course to a new fantastic place with no road map; it’s rife with hiccups, missteps, retractions, and maybe just a few little moments of pure, unadulterated fear. And when it comes to codification, the same story goes.

When it comes to Anglo-American processes of law, it may seem like a bundle better left untampered with, but the truth is that the entire backbone of the modern tradition of British law comes down to understanding the importance of modernizing the legal codes and processes, because if the rules don’t change with the people, then what good are the laws?

Ever been locked out of your home?

Imagine, it’s 9 pm on a Friday night. The taxi drops you off just outside your home. You are exhausted and can’t wait to flop on the couch. As you reach your front door you fumble around trying to find your keys. You look everywhere through your bag and pat-down yourself from head to toe to see if they are in a different pocket.

Your mind starts racing wondering where you left your keys. Are they at work? Did you leave them at the bar when you were having some after work drinks with mates?