through salmon-tinted lenses

"When the month of June rolls around, I have to buy the five-pound bride magazine off the rack at the grocery store.  The photographs of white dresses, articles with to-do lists, and advertisements for wedding planners remind me of my older sister Rochelle's wedding" (3). 

I, too, had to re-read the story's opening to discover that the narrator plans to buy the same wedding magazines she used to ridicule Rochelle for buying.  Still, this passage is difficult to unpack.  Readers can get stuck in a cycle of wondering if the narrator is being forced to buy these magazines, or if she feels compelled to do so out of her own volition.  But whether or not the narrator's plans are internally or externally motivated, what is significant in this moment is the comparison that the narrator makes.  Somehow, "thick glossy pages" filled with "photographs of white dresses, articles with to-do lists, and advertisements for wedding planners" remind her of a ceremony that was devoid of all of these things. 

Considering the narrator describes the wedding as dignified and intimate, I don't think the she draws this comparison as a judgement against Rochelle's failed attempt at her dream wedding.  Instead, the notion of personal happiness (or at least contentment) is the similarity that allows the narrator to compare those glossy magazines to a ceremony that "was nothing like she had expected" (4).  That is, Rochelle's wedding is much like those in the magazines.  The details don't matter if the bride looks at her groom "as if they were the only two people" in the room (8). 

But perhaps my lenses are too salmon-tinted.  Does the story suggest another reason why the narrator compares these two dissimilar weddings?