ROUTLEDGE’S First Law of Marriage states that the durability of the union is in inverse proportion to the grandiloquence of the wedding.
The bigger the splash, the greater the expenditure and the more lavish the nuptials, the less likely it is the happy couple will stay together for the rest of their lives.Royal marriages are very much a case in point, with divorce the norm rather the exception, but the rule holds good for lesser mortals. The cost of tying the knot goes up all the time, exceeded only by the bill for splitting.
The average wedding today costs a whopping £18,605. This includes £1,500 on the bride’s outfit, £950 on photography and the same again for a video. Four grand goes on the reception, and another four grand on the honeymoon. Money has taken the place of commitment.
So I’m a wee bit anxious today’s multi-million-pound, live-TV Westminster Abbey royal spectacular might just have the seeds of its own destruction. The greater the hype, the smaller the chances of marital success. Not even Charles and Di’s glamorous wedding soared to such dizzy heights of media stardom. And look where that got them. I’m not saying William and Kate don’t love each other, or that they don’t want to be together for life. I am saying the pressure of publicity and the expectations piled on such a dazzling event make it exceptionally difficult for two young people to make the right start in married life.
My wedding cost about £20, all in. That was in 1963 – maybe a couple of hundred in today’s money. And I’m still married. To the same woman, indeed. Nobody even knew we’d got wed, because we eloped to Edinburgh and persuaded a Church of Scotland minister, the Rev Campbell Maclean (God rest his soul) of Cramond Kirk to marry us. I couldn’t cope with the stuff William and Kate are being compelled to undergo.
Very few young people could. This wedding is a monster that has got out of control. It has become an affair of state, not a love affair. It isn’t an honest-to-goodness wedding. It’s a state occasion bringing together foreign ambassadors and politicians, none of whom have the faintest knowledge or understanding of the Royal pair. Amid the sprinkling of celebrities, the Abbey pews are stuffed with MoD brasshats and the rest of the British establishment.
The authority of the state is on show. It is a pageant of power, and not a particularly attractive one at that. It says: “Don’t forget who runs this country.” Ex-premier Sir John Major is invited, but neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown. The omissions are not accidental.
When the trumpets have fallen silent, and the £60,000-a-day TV camera vantage points have been dismantled, and the bouquets are just dead flowers, and the newspaper supplements are brown and brittle, these two young people will have to try to make their marriage work. And the scale of today’s ballyhoo will make that patient task infinitely harder.
News Collected from: http://www.mirror.co.uk.
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