Marriage - Get Me To The Church On Time!

Community
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No guys, I’m not talking about me here, as I was more thinking about people in general…

I can’t say I’ve been thinking so much about it, as I have a relaxed attitude towards marriage, but what do
you guys think about Marriage?

Maybe you are married, maybe you are about to get married, or maybe you are still looking for the right
one…

Have you experienced love? if so, have it changed you or your opinions about marriage in some sort of way?

Have you ever been thinking about how it would be to walk up the church floor to get married, and have you
ever thought about the church or ceremony, or how to make this a special event?

Being a musician myself i would probably have the Mendelssohn’s wedding march played on church organ merged with Wagners Bridal chorus accompanied by two snare drums, playing while walking the church floor - and it would all start with Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra :D, what type of music would you choose for a marriage?

Many of my friends have married over the years, but i can’t say i feel time is running out for me - how about
you, do you panic or feel that time is running out for you, that love is slipping away?

I like to think about marriage as a nice tradition, how do you think or feel about it?

Some people rush and stress about finding the right one and get married, but i have never understood the
rush… most of my married friends did marry in their 20’s or 30’s, but some of they were also married in
their 40’s, 50’s and even 60’s - I don’t think marriage or love belongs to a particular stage of age, but as
I said, I see many people panic about their age, and not getting married; what are your thoughts about
getting to the church on time?

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Well I must admit, I’m also not one for rushing for anything and I guess a wedding would be no different for me! :rofl:

I’m not married yet myself but do plan on doing so, luckily for me I have already found my “Totally Amazing Mr. Right” so that panic is over for us :lol: We haven’t planned anything as yet but I’m sure whatever we do plan we’ll no doubt be on the same page as we are completely alike, so much so it’s spooky!

I can understand people, especially women that I talk to about this sort of stuff when they worry about age and starting a family when they haven’t met “the one”, mostly afraid of “being left on the shelf” - I don’t think you should rush anything or put pressure on a certain time frame, these things should just happen naturally as they are meant to be. You do have those who seek out a Mr/Miss Right on say match making websites or services but I wonder if this really achieves anything in the long run? As the song goes, “You can’t hurry love” which is quite true! :agree: Is it the same for men, would you guys worry about not meeting Miss Right? :shifty:

I also see marriage as traditional too, a symbolism of commitment and love IMO. Nowadays you see so many couples trying to out do friends or neighbours with what’s the most expensive venue they can have, number of guests etc - it can get very crazy not to mention having an exclusive wedding planner if you have a few thousand to spare (talk about competition)! Some are completely over the top, less is more to me - don’t get me wrong I’m wanting the fairy tale and I better get it :smash: but nothing crazy, crass or tacky for me! :nono:

I wonder, just out of curiosity, if you did happen to get married, would you upload your wedding on the web? I see a few people doing this, basically starting say their own .com and dedicating it to their big day - it’s sounds like a nice idea and would be quite cool to share it with friends and family, particularly say perhaps those who may not have made the big day for some reason or another or even to take a trip down memory lane off and on, what do you think? Is this something that would appeal to you, or do you think it’s tacky, a wedding should be traditional, dig out the old photo album or camcorder any day of the week instead?! See, that’s the other thing, getting a photographer you can trust! I mean, I’m very particular about photography, I think that would be the major concern for me, capturing those moments perfectly, it’s not like they can be re-created! I think I’d have to have a few photographers floating around the place, back-ups (covering the what-if scenarios) :lol:

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I think some people are destined to be married and some are not. There are some people I know who are quiet content being on their own, but for others I do believe there is someone out there. I’ve been happily married for almost ten years now and it’s been wonderful. Being able to share the ups and downs of life with my best friend is truly amazing.

In my opinion there is no rush to get married. I say wait as long as you need to until you find that special person. I’ve seen people get married young and old and no matter the age you can still be happy and enjoy the companionship that marriage brings.

I too have seen a lot of people rush into marriage because they feel like the clock is ticking and if they don’t make the move now they will somehow lose out. I think finding the “right” one is more important than finding “anyone” right now.

Anyway…that’s my 2 cents.

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taco - I completely agree - I’d rather go through life alone than settle for 2nd best :nono:

You hear about lots of people re-marrying again and again, even renewing their vows - I wonder does it really work or achieve anything either? It’s a nice idea to renew vows I can understand that, but to completely remarry again? Seems a bit redundant to me shrugs

Btw, congratulations with your almost 10 years taco, that’s lovely! :smiley:

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We got married but not for any of the traditional reasons. We’re not religious so there was no need to do anything in the eyes of some fictitious god or other, we felt no need to prove our commitment to anyone else and we have parties anyway so there was no ‘social glue’ aspect to it. The idea of wedding parties helping to bond communities is anachronistic in this day and age.

We got married pure and simple because if we hadn’t I’d have had no legal rights over our children including not even being able to sign a consent form for an emergency operation.

Besides saying ‘I do’ and wearing a ring (or what ever the local custom is) doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to whether or not most people stay together, when it’s over it’s over. I made the biggest commitment it’s possible for a man to make to his partner when I had my vasectomy, I made my self biologically useless to every other women on the planet. Now that’s a commitment to a relationship.

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are you sure you have no panic here? :stuck_out_tongue:

me neither, some girlfriends has asked me about marriage over the years, i had to reply - sure hun, if we find someone to marry…

I have no rush or panic, as i’m in my prime, and my life is still happening :smiley:

sure, coz that would be one crazy wedding haha :smiley:

I would of course get a good photographer - but i/we would be in charge of the plannning and choreography - i love photographing and crazyness, so the pictures would be special and made just for us and our personality :smiley:

this is an opinion i totally agree with - these things happend when they do :slight_smile:

me too - I’m not that desperate :lol:

I agree, in my eyes you don’t need a marriage to prove anything. I know many people who live their whole life together, without getting married. I once asked a lady why they were not getting married, and she said that it didn’t prove anything - they were as happy as they could be :slight_smile:

wow, that’s impressive! I can tell you, i would never do that.

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I’m pretty sure I will never get married. The more I think about it, the more it all seems like a useless social engineering device (useless to me anyway).

The whole thing is just a standard forced onto people by society and government, oh and don’t forget the divorce lawyers. :slight_smile: But it’s not my standard.

What is the use of getting married? What’s in it for me?

When you have a life partner, you don’t need to have to prove something to anyone or give tokens of commitment. Either there’s trust or no - it’s as simple as that. Marriage only makes things complicated. If something goes wrong in a relationship and you’re married, it can become a hell - I know too many examples, some too close. If something goes wrong and you’re not married you just part ways, as it should be. And if everything is going great then why change anything? Don’t fix it if it’s not broken.

This is about the only reason when it would make sense to get married:

But even then I think if there’s no other way? Surely, you as the father, should be able to get those rights without getting married? I wound rather not get into a legal binding when there’s no benefit from it to me.

The bottom line is that life partnership is just another business partnership. The contract should be beneficial to all parties involved. And you can make a contract, but marriage per se is a very bad contract to make. Sometimes there’s a winner, sometimes not, but the point is that partnership is must not be a zero sum game! Unfortunately, to me marriage makes it seem all too close to it.

As for the celebration, you can and should celebrate your relationship every day! :Partier: But who said you can’t have a party without supervision? We’re not children anymore, for goodness sake, we don’t need a nanny. I think people forget that far too often :smiley:

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I guess it depends on where you live. In Italy, if you don’t get married:

  • you can’t adopt children
  • you’ll have to make a will to leave your belongings to your partner, and if you have children you can’t even do that as you see fit, because a large part will go to them by law (so your partner will have to hope that your children will be kind enough to let him/her stay in your house)
  • there is no obligation to pay alimony when the relationship comes to an end

I’m sure there are other pratical problems as well, but these come to mind right now.

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I was worried about the clock ticking before I got married. But now that I am married, it still seems to be ticking—and faster and faster all the time! :eek:

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So that means three options - get married, don’t have children, or get married in a country that doesn’t have these restrictions. Marriage is not my top option from that list.

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Mostly, I wonder what it would be like. I’ve never been even close to having to make that decision.

Simply observing the merits and detriments of marriage and actually being in one are two entirely different things.

I’m certainly not going to rush things, but on the other hand, I’m not going to wait around until retirement age either.

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Actually there was, you can have legal documents drawn up at around £70 per child I think but I liked the idea of whisking my partner off to a registery office and just doing the deed better, it’s cheaper and quicker, and if I’m honest it had an element of spontaneous romance about it (which is just evidence of more social pressure/tradition really).

Turns out though that you can’t just show up and get married anymore, there has to be a 60 day cooling off period and that gave my partner time to turn my 5 minute plan into a ‘proper’ wedding with guests and a party etc etc, albeit on a pretty small scale. Just immediate family and a few friends. I even wear a ring which just proves that despite my fairly independent and questioning viewpoint I’m still a victim of tradition and expectation like most people.

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Can’t edit my post but I meant - live in a country that doesn’t have these restrictions, not get married in one. Getting married in a different country doesn’t really help the issue of not getting married.

Oh dude, you’re a lost cause :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’m extremely happy to be married, even though I didn’t have much choice.

You see, I had to import a woman from Canada to find someone who would put up with me, and if I didn’t marry her, they’d have sent her back! :lol:

In all seriousness though, I adore my wife and I love being married. Having the right person makes all the difference. :cool:

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I know. However, my wife was nice enough to take me on so there’s some hope.

Actually I forgot that there was another small reason we got married and it was because after 16 years together and three kids I didn’t like calliing her my ‘girlfriend’ because that didn’t do justice to our relationship and it turned out at one place I worked they thought I was gay because I referred to her as my ‘partner’. Being able to call her my wife just makes life easier, people know where they are then.

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Ken, like yourself I am chilled. Nowadays, many consider it mainly just a piece of legal paper and tradition. No, I haven’t found the right girl so it’s never really entered my head about what it would take…

Obviously a lot of people get married in their 20s and 30s when they can afford to leave home and want to bring-up a family and show commitment.

Well, having a soul mate is good and obviously you’d love him regardless of whether you were married or not a kind of kindled true love. :slight_smile:

I am Mr Right. But Miss Right hasn’t found me. I think traditionally there is less of a worry for the man as we tend to be simpler and don’t have to worry regarding getting pregnant, etc. Though of course we’d like to find somebody matched if we were to have a family, etc.

[QUOTE=Crazybanana,post:6,topic:82397"]
… sure, coz that would be one crazy wedding haha :smiley:
[/quote]

I’d watch it; I know it would be guaranteed to be full on crazy time especially when it got to the guitar playing. :wink:

JJMcClure, perhaps maybe you still could have referred to her as your “wife” even when she was still technically your girlfriend after several years. I know a lot of people; that do call their long term girlfriends their ‘wife’ even though they aren’t legally married.

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so you would move to another country to escape these things? how do you think your girlfriend would react to such a suggestion?

:rofl:

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It certainly would be an eye-opener. :wink:

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Not necessarily but it’s one of the options. As for the girlfriend’s reaction, I’d do everything to sell her the idea. :smiley:

“Escape” is an interesting word. If you feel like you need to escape, then you probably do.

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even get married? :wink:

I felt this way ever since the internet opened to the public… :shifty: