It’s wedding season...

The news is full of tales of glamorous weddings, both royal and celebrity. Every week the local paper is filled with engagement and wedding notices, pictures of happy couples dressed to the nines.

A wedding is a beautiful thing, not so much about the groom, let be honest, but a day of hope and love and a beautiful, blushing bride. A nice frock, generally average food, a pretty cake. Boring speeches and some dodgy rellies. Reality is suspended amongst a tidal wave of tulle, almonds and baby’s breath. Then the honeymoon, often somewhere in the sun with too much food and booze...

Then what? Straight back to life as it was before for most people, jobs, bills, housework...

So much time, money and effort goes into a wedding but what about afterwards?

A marriage takes work. It doesn’t matter how much you love each other, there has to be effort put in. I’m not talking about flash dinners or sexy underwear; I mean the day to day slog to keep things on track. Learning the art of compromise, to share, to trust one another, to have common goals, attitudes and ethics. You do not need to be clones, but you have to work together for the common good...your family, whether there are 2 of you or 10.

These days you don’t have to take the step to actually marry a person to commit, but it seems that so many people rush to the alter knowing that there is an easy out if things don’t go well. It is nothing for “celebrities” to jump from one marriage to another, with seemingly no break between relationships, now regular people are at it too.

We live in a country where marriage and divorce are easy, about half of our marriages end in it, but there are still members of our society who are not legally entitled to marry, despite the love and genuine sense of commitment that they have towards their partner.

The “Church” and the government will tell you that gay marriage is a threat, but surely if a couple, whoever they are, enter a marriage with a genuine love and a commitment to make it last forever then it how can it be wrong?

The lack of understanding by many as to what marriage actually means, as opposed to a wedding – which a lot of people don’t seem to look beyond - the lack of commitment when things get tough and an attitude that divorce is easy and monogamy old fashioned is far more damaging to the “sanctity of marriage”.

I think it should be harder to actually get married, some kind of counselling, personality testing, a “licensing” exam...something to slow people on their headlong rush to a “wedding”, to have a more considered approach to the marriage that comes afterwards...

But that’s just me, what do you think?