Why have weddings become so grotesque?

People make such a fuss about their weddings nowadays that it's hard to remember marriage is fundamentally a couple of sentences - it wasn't me who said "with hard labour" - w\ritten on a piece of paper.

People can love their partners and promise them the world, but marriage remains what it was described as being by that loyal fellow, Robert Louis Stevenson. "It is a sort of friendship," he said, "recognised by the police."

Yet to go by the antics of the average young British couple, you'd think the decision to get married was akin to the inauguration of an election campaign or the sending of a Task Force to the Falklands: noisy, hysterical, with lots of sickness, no certainty of success, and the promise of vast expense on every front.
advertisement

There will be casualties along the way - usually a parent or two, the odd friend, and sometimes one's intended - but the real horror of the modern wedding is surely the cost. It is now felt that the bond is not quite a bond unless it is sealed with a golden kiss: tens of thousands of pounds and three weeks in the Seychelles. Read more
No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.