For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll

My partner and I have been together for nearly 12 years. We’re perfectly happy and aren’t fussed about tying the knot. So it’s very tiresome when people ask me the perennial question: “So, when are you getting married?”

These days, it doesn’t seem necessary to make a relationship ‘legal’. The social pressure has gone: ‘living in sin’ is perfectly acceptable. People who get married might think it’s important to proclaim their love in front of all their family and friends, but we’re a self-contained, quite private couple and that really doesn’t appeal.

I love a good party and a pretty frock as much as the next girl, but the thought of having my ‘big day’ sends me into a cold sweat. Studies have shown a wedding with all the trimmings can cost as much as £20,000; a ridiculous figure in today’s austere times, especially when we can’t scrape together a deposit to get on the housing ladder.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that every wedding has to be a big fat meringue of a day. Smaller, more intimate weddings are probably more fun anyway because at least then everyone can relax. The principle remains though: I’m just not fussed about getting married at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy weddings. They’re just more appealing if I can be sat in the pews, followed by getting merry at the reception without worrying about how much I might be embarrassed by the speeches. You won’t find me amongst the throng of women anxiously waiting to catch the bride’s bouquet. Just don’t say “It will be you next...”.


The funny thing is, I really enjoy wedding programmes; Four Weddings and Don’t Tell the Bride are particular favourites. Being the wedding cynic I am, my enjoyment is gained as much from the schadenfreude when things go awry as from admiring the dresses.  Wedding planning seems stressful, but also fun, but I’m not so gullible so as to get swept up by a bit of light-hearted reality TV.

A couple of people I know have run off to get married: some abroad, while a former colleague took a day off work and snuck off to the registry office. A wedding abroad sounds appealing: a holiday and wedding in one. Plus, you’ve got only yourselves to please, no table plan to stress over and no worrying about who you might offend if you don’t invite them.  Should I ever change my mind about getting hitched, running away to do the deed would result in a short-lived marriage, not least because my mum would kill me.

A Freudian psychoanalyst could probably have some fun with my partner and I, as we are both the product of now-divorced parents. It would surely be a half-baked theory, though, as lots of other children of separated spouses manage to put that thought to one side and vow to each other that their marriage will be different. I genuinely don’t feel any pressure or need to get married – at the moment, anyway.

We’re looking towards having children (I’m 33, tick tock goes the biological clock; yes, I really should get on with it). I suppose you should never say never, as I might change my mind about the whole marriage thing if/when we have children; it might make more sense then to become more of an ‘official’ family unit.

Is my lack of enthusiasm about marriage an unromantic notion? I don’t think so. My partner and I invest in our relationship and work hard at it. We’re as married as married couples, just without the piece of paper. We live together, pay the bills, do the food shopping, chores and argue over the remote control.

Who’s to say our relationship isn’t as strong, just because we haven’t made a public proclamation to each other? So lay off the pressure, please, well-meaning folks.