By that convention, if I’d been born a few generations ago and had thus wed, in my early 20s, my first or second boyfriend, I’d still be married to absolutely the wrong person. I don’t even think that two people who are no longer happy in a union, despite their best intentions and not for lack of trying, should remain together just for the sake of it, which is really the whole point of marriage, and what the vows are all about. Indeed, there are very few places left in the modern world where a marriage certificate will earn you any meaningful privileges (arbitrary exceptions include some parts of the Middle East where you can’t book a shared hotel room without one). It means nothing for the custody of our child should we split up. It won’t get us a better deal on car insurance. The fact that my German fiancé and I will soon go from being boyfriend and girlfriend to husband and wife makes it no easier or less time-consuming for him to get a UK visa so that he can live and work here. The very legality of marriage doesn’t even mean much anymore. That’s not to mention the nearly 50-50 odds that it will all end in tears and the divorce will add at least £14,000 in legal fees to your tab, according to the Government’s Money Advice Service. The expense of it all (upwards of £30,000 being the current UK average) confounds me – thousands of pounds spent on a puritanical white dress to be worn just once, plates upon plates of buffet food that will never be much better than a canteen dinner, no matter how much you spend on it – all for a party, the planning and politics of which is guaranteed to waste more time and generate more stress than it can ever make up for in momentary fun. The creepy rituals associated with a traditional wedding still make my toes curl everything from the “handing over” of the bride to the performative snog at the altar and the awkward speeches that follow. Neither do I approve of all the couples I know who don’t believe in God either but have nevertheless jumped flagrantly through the hoops required to hold their nuptials in a church, and disingenuously pledged their love to Jesus Christ before an audience. I don’t subscribe to religion, which has always been at the root of matrimony, and until very recently in history was the sole moral incentive that kept fundamentally mismatched couples bound. Being well versed in the statistics (42 per cent of marriages end in divorce, according to the latest ONS data), and considering my own father left when I was five, I am under no illusions that our union will last a lifetime simply because we signed on the dotted line. No one is more surprised than I am, given I haven’t changed my mind about the vast majority of what I previously said. For this summer, shortly before the birth of our first child, I shall be partaking in a shotgun wedding to a man about as far from my usual type as it is possible to be – and I am blissfully happy at the prospect. Today, join me at the table as I eat my way through a sizeable word sandwich. Almost three years ago, I wrote an article in which I denounced the institution of marriage and declared I had no wish to ever walk down the aisle myself.
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