That’s one nice thing about being a smoker…as soon as I figure out they are doing the damn toss I head on out for a cig.
I finally convinced my dad that I refuse to take part in such a stupid tradition and leave me alone when the bouquet toss is happening.
Oh and as for weddings in general, if I ever get married it will be close family and close friends in a small town’s courthouse. Then, a huge party in the mountains complete with BBQ, volleyball, horseshoes and the like…none of this foo foo stuff for me. Hey my dad would kill me if I ever got married and he didn’t have a chance to drink beer and spend money on a party of some sort. Why not do it in such a way that the people can feel comfortable and relax a little?
Also, every Valentines Day Loveland ski area holds a mass wedding on the mountain for those wanting to get married. That would be fun.
I cried when I saw my little brother walk out in a tux to say his vows. I got teary when my buddy Jim took the plunge.
Its always for different reasons. My brother seemed to young to sign away his life like that - 7 years later, he swears he is happy…I even beleive it most of the time.
When Jim got married, I cried because he also seemed too young - in my mind he hasnt aged since we were teens - but more than that, I knew he was getting married because it just seems the thing to do.
I cried for Angie for the mistake I knew she was making.
See, I listen to the words, and I think: “Wouldnt it be great if this was real, if they really could commit themselves for life”… I think, “boy! would I like to feel like that about someone!”
Weddings depress me…its not the ceremony, I actually think a traditional ceremony is beautiful… its the lie of what a marriage is. That is what makes me sad.
Maybe that’s what is bothering you, Angkins. The * planning of a wedding * IS much like Christmas. The desire for perfection and to * feel fulfilled. * Afterwards, much like Christmas [after the paper is picked up and the battered boxes are stored for next year up in the attic] It goes back to ** WORK and being mundane ** again.
I think women are especially vulnerable to this, since the dream fantasy is a much more female ‘happy ever after’ scenario than what males have.
Also, there are books that show and teach ‘the perfect wedding’. [either for ‘posterity’ or just for show] Hey guys, where’s the ‘perfect marriage book’ instead??? Sure, it isn’t out there, but there’s always the hope!!
I’ve done a LOT of thinking about this, and I have decided that I will not have a big wedding. I am going to have a very small wedding, probably in Las Vegas. And when I do, I will NOT invite ANY of my family. I don’t have the energy to deal with those people. Especially since my grandparents are so controlling. I will have a reception (maybe), or maybe I won’t be able to go through with it (The reception)
I mean, I don’t have any real friends I would invite, neither does Jim. His parents don’t like me much (I stole their baby) and my grandparents don’t like him much (He stole their baby) and my other grandparents wouldn’t even show up. My parents and my sisters are the only ones who would A)Care B)Show up and C)Be happy for us.
Aunti Pro, I agree with you partly. I never had a dream fantasy about my wedding. even as a child I never thought about or pretended I was getting married. I never wanted to get married, but I did. I got caught up in the planning and the arranging, but now 2 married years later, I find myself unhappy and somewhat uncomfortable with being married. Although lately hubby and I have had some problems, I really don’t believe it is that I do not want him, I just feel… smothered, trapped and just generally discontent. I did not feel this way when we were just living together.
Maybe some people are not cut out to be a MRS… maybe I am one of those people.
80% of marriages end in divorce? Not even close. The real figure seems to be that about 40% of marriages end in divorce. (Note: All statistics in this post apply just to the U.S.) A statistic that you frequently see is that 50% end in divorce, but that’s based on a mistaken reading of some real statistics. In 1981, the number of divorces during that year was quite close to being half of the number of marriages during that year. If that were true every year, it might really be true that 50% of all marriages end in divorce, but 1981 was the only year that that was even close to being true. There seem to be two reasons why the proportion of divorces to marriages was so high in that year. One is that the proportion of divorces was rising during most of the 20th century (in the U.S.). It appears that it peaked around 1981 and has been slowly dropping since then. The second is that the Baby Boomers were in their peak years for divorce around 1981. The most likely time for a first marriage is in a person’s early '20’s and the most likely time for a divorce in a person’s early '30’s.
There’s an even more complicated reason why even the 40% figure for the proportion of marriages that end in divorce is slightly deceptive. Feel free to skip this paragraph if you don’t want to have to think about math too much. There’s a difference between the following two numbers: Suppose you go up to a random couple at their wedding and ask, “What’s the probability that this marriage will end in divorce?” Now suppose you go up to a random person on the street and accertain that he or she is married. You ask, “What the probability that this person’s marriage will end in divorce?” Surprisingly, the answer to the two questions can be different. To explain why, let me make up an exaggerated example. Suppose we have a population of 100 people who only marry among themselves, 50 of whom are male and 50 of whom are female. Suppose that we can divide these people into a divorce-prone group (25 of the men and 25 of the women) and a divorce-resistant group (the other 25 of the men and the other 25 of the women). Suppose that the 25 divorce-resistant woman and the 25 divorce-resistant men are matched up in pairs and married and their marriages last all their lives. Suppose that the 25 divorce-prone mena and the 25 divorce-prone men also all marry. Each of the divorce-prone marriages ends in divorce. All 50 choose another mate in the divorce-prone group and marry again. Each second marriage ends in divorce. All 50 choose still another mate in the divorce-prone group and marry again. The third marriages also end in divorce. There have now been 100 marriages in this group of 100 people. 75 of them have ended in divorce. So the probability that a marriage will end in divorce is 75%. However, the probability that a random married person will ever get divorced is only 50%.
Yes, this situation doesn’t completely fit the U.S., but it is true that there are divorce-prone and divorce-resistant people and it is true that divorce-prone tend to marry divorce-prone and divorce-resistant tend to marry divorce-resistant. Because of this, although the percentage of marriages that end in divorce is about 40%, the percentage of married people who will eventually get divorced is somewhat less, perhaps about 35%.
I adore weddings, but only when I’m a distant relative, or an old friend, or the random chick the bride’s brother picked up at a club last night. Damned if I’m going to have one of my own. About all I’m up for is the justice of the peace, a pretty dress (not necessarily white), half a dozen close relatives, and a few bottles of champagne afterwards.
The sad part is, I have male friends who absolutely refuse to believe that some women don’t want a big three-ring circus with tons of hothouse flowers and bridesmaids in hideous costumes. Damn capitalist propaganda.
Wendell, I apologize if you covered this, but my problem with the statistic is as such.
A certain amount of people get married in a year, and a certain amount of people get divorced in a year. Most people will take these numbers, divide one by the other, and get the ‘percentage’ of divorces. I feel this is a tainted sample.
The reason is, the marriages are only from that year, whereas the divorces are from every year, from, say, 1920 to 2000. It’s counting people who’ve been married 2 months, and people who’ve been married 80 years. In order to get a clean statistic, you would need to count the marriages in, say, 1990, and come back in 2030 and count the number who’ve been divorced since. Of course, this still won’t give you a good percentage, because the trend towards divorce will likely have shifted in the 40 years of the study.
This being as it is, I don’t think we really can find a clean statistic on something as long (or short) term as this.
Overall, I’d say about 20-30% get divorced, just from my own observations.
You’re quite right, Homer. In fact, it’s not just difficult to determine the proportion of marriages entered into this year that will end in divorce, it’s literally impossible. It’s a prediction, and no amount of statistics from earlier years will allow you to accurately make such a prediction. What you end up doing is some variant of the following: Look at all the marriages which were entered into ten years ago. What proportion of them have already ended in divorce? Using some mathematical mumbo-jumbo, use this number to predict how many of these marriages will eventually end in divorce. Do the same thing for all marriages entered into twenty or thirty or forty or whatever years ago. Eventually you will get a prediction of the proportion of today’s marriages that will end in divorce, but it’s no more than a guess. Nobody really knows the future trends in marriage and divorce.
I’m going to get married outside, in the summer, in a field, surrounded by friends and family, and jump across the fire with my loved one in proper Pagan style. Let the beauty of the world be our cathedral.
And then there’s going to be one heck of a party with a good live band. Maybe Persone from Sweden.
None of this white-lace consumerist frenzy for me! Why should our friends and relatives spend themselves into the poorhouse (or more probably, debtors’ prison) just so we can maintain parity in the extravagance wars? The concept of the “bridal gift registry” just makes me blanch. And, yes, they have them for grooms too.
Then again, maybe we’ll just go to city hall like my sisters did.
Of course, if I find someone with whom I want to spend a significant part of my life, this may change. But probably not as much as one might think…
How can an event with SOOOO many expectations built into it ever live up to them? A disappointment waiting to happen, if you ask me. And a costly one, at that!
I’ve said it before, and I stand by it. Marriage is a floundering, outdated concept.
[soapbox]
I disagree. However, I believe there is some basis of fact in the above statement. Weddings are somewhat outmoded as practiced in the modern world today (those of you living in non-modern worlds may ignore this pronouncement).
Nearly everything regarding marriage, whether in print, on television, or even casual conversation, leads me to believe that a lot of people seem to think that the most important part of a marriage is THE WEDDING. Somehow, if everything goes right at the wedding, the marriage will follow suit.
Cow exhaust! If as much (preferably more) serious thought were given to what happens after everyone says “I do”, there would be more happy marriages (and in my book contented counts as 90% of happy). "Happily-ever-after doesn’t fall from the sky like manna from heaven. You have to make it yourself, in cooperation with your life-partner. If either of you isn’t committed to what you are together, you aren’t in a marriage, but an impending divorce. Life is tough, and you either face down your difficulties as a team or one of you leaves the other holding the bag.
A wedding doesn’t bond two people together in wedded bliss. It only announces to the community that you and your partner intend to stay together until one of you is dead, and you like this idea enough to let everyone know about it. A marriage, on the other hand, starts the moment both partners decide to honor their love and respect for each other more than their own individual desires. They don’t give up being self-interested, but they replace “What’s best for me?” with “What’s best for us?” Ideally, this happens some time before the wedding. If it hasn’t happened by the time people start walking down the aisle (or into the Justice 'o the Peace’s office), it probably won’t.
A beautiful wedding is a fantasy. It’s smoke and mirrors and ceremony and music and ultimately signifies nothing unless the participants are more interested in what happens after everyone else goes home.
[/soapbox]
Although I agree with this in principle, I just don’t see too much of it. I see that my sister has resented her husband for 3 years and shows no signs of letting up. My mother and father have 5 divorces between them.
A couple of friends of mine lived together for 2 years. Then they got married. They got divorced 30 days later. That’s right, THIRTY DAYS!!! Check out the news from Hollywood, where the average marriage lasts about 2 years. And Elizibeth Taylor should be constitutionally barred from ever marrying again. (what is up to? Nine?)
And even our ‘family values’ republican pundits are not immune. Buchanan, Gingrich, Dole, and Limbaugh have all been divorced. Hell, divorce is now a game show on daytime TV. (Divorce Court, if you haven’t seen it)
This doesn’t even begin to cover the instances of infidelity, physical abuse, emotional torture, and yes, even murder in couples who are not getting divorced.
It may be a good idea in theory. In practice, it sucks.
In the past two years, my two closest friends and my sister have all gotten married. They each had a big ceremony, and they were all very nice, but they absolutely compounded my determination that if I ever do it it’ll be me, the guy and the judge. Maybe we’ll throw a big party afterward, maybe we won’t, I really don’t care (of course, I’m also nowhere near getting married at this point in time!).
My family incidentally is totally supportive of me on this issue. The day before my sister’s wedding, when they were absolutely exhausted (and broke) from the preparations, they told me “If you ever get married, we’ll pay you to elope!”
It is a total incomprehension from me as to why this “it is my day and it has to be perfect” malarkey persists. Has such a thing ever occurred?
During the planning for my own wedding, mother-in-law and her normally dutiful daughter, got so tied up in this concept that they had a screaming stand-up argument about the colour of the table napkins.
My recollection of the day was that a group of good friends got together with a bunch of hangers-on, drank a bloody lot of bloody good wine and those guests who had the oysters (about 1/3rd and almost exclusively the hangers-on! ;)) ended up in hospital with severe food poisoning!
> Although I agree with this in principle, I just don’t see
> too much of it. I see that my sister has resented her
> husband for 3 years and shows no signs of letting up. My
> mother and father have 5 divorces between them.
It’s not possible to be polite in saying this, but, spooje, have you ever considered the possibility that the people you know have had worse than average experiences with marriage? Divorces tend to go in clusters. I admit that my friends and relatives have had better than average experiences with marriage. That’s why I don’t use my experiences as typical for the U.S. as a whole. It’s important to actually look at the statistics. People don’t seem to like to do this, but using just the people around you to base your judgments on is awfully provincial.
My father thinks that everything was better in the good old days, which he believes meant the women stayed home and took care of the children and house, and the men earned the income and were lords and masters of the house. He thinks the feminists ruined everything for everyone.
Now being divorced doesn’t carry as much of a stigma as it did back then, and people who are truly unhappy, or too unsuited to each other, are not expected to spend a lifetime of misery together.
I don’t see the rise in the divorce statistics to be such a bad thing, except for the effects it may have on children of those divorces. But they grow up realizing that they, also, will not need to be trapped forever in an unbearable life, if their own marriages don’t work out.
That said, I always cry at weddings, and think the ceremonies are lovely and enjoy the dresses and flowers and celebrating. I congratulate the people, and thank them for the lovely party they put on, which to many of them is a public way of showing their commitment to each other.
Both of my failed marriages started out as very small weddings.
“http://www.smartmarriages.com/7.html”]Okay. “Younger people in the U.S. who are marrying for the first time face roughly a 40-50% chance of divorcing in their lifetime under current trends (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992, p. 5).” “http://www.mostnewyork.com/1998-09-18/News_and_Views/City_Beat/a-5499.asp?last6days%3D1”]And "A Daily News analysis of court statistics reveals that between 1993 and 1997, the number of divorce filings in the city rose from 23,911 to 30,671 — a jump of more than 28%. “http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/ff98-07.html”]And of course "The number of single fathers in the United States has grown by leaps and
bounds in recent years: there were 2.0 million in 1997, 50 percent more than in 1990 and triple the number in 1980.
I could find more, but it’s too depressing. I should get some sleep.
