Splashing out won't mean fairytale marriage

Published on 16/08/2007 12:24

WHEN I was little I always fantasised about the day I would get hitched. It would be a big glamorous affair with an army of bridesmaids and my hubby-to-be giving Prince Charming a run for his money.

Wearing my hand-crafted flowing white gown and bejewelled veil, I would arrive in a Bentley. And as I entered the quaint candle-lit church with my proud dad by my side, I would know this was going to be the best day of my life.

Fast forward two decades to the real world and my childhood fantasies will never become reality.

The thing is, I don't want my make-believe play sessions to come true. With age comes a few broken hearts and romantic maturity and so now, when I think about saying "I Do", I want to do it for love - not a big, look-at-me fairytale affair.

According to wedding planners TK Weddings, an average wedding now costs a staggering 60 a minute, and more women are falling prey to competitive wedding syndrome and turning into a less than pretty "Bridezilla".

To women whose main priority is to impress others,20,000 is a drop in the ocean. Being a bride is big business and couples are resorting to additional bank loans and second jobs just to fund a lavish bash. Even the wedding planners are saying that splashing the cash will not guarantee guests a perfect day.

"So many couples think the only way to get a dream wedding is to buy it and that's not the case," says TK Weddings managing director Tamryn Kirby. "A wedding where the couple have put thought, rather than cash, into everything is so much more impressive to guests."

It appears that expense has become a measurement of future happiness. And it's not just the wedding day that's affected by all this extravagance.

Hen nights have become hen weekends. Somehow they've morphed into luxury spa breaks that cost guests an arm and a leg. Men attending stag parties are also increasingly requiring the use of a passport and copious amounts of cash.

My single friends and I now admit that there's nothing wrong with a wedding dress from Monsoon, that it's OK to make the invitations, and it's actually nicer and more intimate to keep it a strictly close friends and family affair.

A lavish wedding does not a loving marriage make.

And forgive me for being cynical but doesn't some super flash wedding mask something else?

Perhaps the relationship isn't as perfect as the big day would allow us to believe. And if there's been blood, sweat and tears - not to mention re-mortgaging and second jobs - to get to the big day, then chances are the path to love is far from smooth. It could well be that the bigger the wedding, the rockier the relationship.

So when I finally tie the knot, there will be no big over-the-top event for me. I'd rather splash out on my close friends and family and use the saved cash to spend a month backpacking around South-east Asia or doing a road trip across the States.

And when I think about love, I remember one elderly couple who lived in the Morningside nursing home I worked at when I was at school.

They didn't have some fancy wedding but tied the knot at a quickie registry office ceremony before the war.

When I met them, more than 70 years on, they were still in love, still holding hands everywhere and still sleeping side by side in their double bed.

They only had eyes for one another. Now that is love - something that will take more than some elaborate party to forge.