How important is marriage?

kindofagilr

I dont think marriage is as important as it used to be?

But I (and my fiance) would like to and will be getting married, but not until we can afford it.

I know weddings dont have to be expensive, and I wont be having a massivly expensive one.

BUT I do want to get married at a specific place (Longhirst Hall) and I want the lovely meal the Hall provides etc etc, but you wont see me spending £4000 on a dress for example.

Once we have paid our debt off (approx 6 years minus the mortgage) then we are going to get married and have a lovely honeymoon in Florida (with our son as well lol, he will be 6 by then, no way I can go to disney world without him lol)

I personally dont want to go to the registry office and get married there, its not for me.

Leona1295

Hello all,

thanks for all the comments, it's been interesting to see everyone's viewpoints on this subject.

After reading through this I have come to realise a few things -

1. at 22 I am probably far too young to be worrying about getting married in the near future! Sometimes I forget that although our relationship is mature at nearly 5 years, we aren't!

2. I have always assumed that I want a big wedding with all the trimmings because all of the weddings have been like that in my family as there are so many of us! Having read through this thread I actually would be very happy to go abroad/have a very small ceremony and then a big party afterwards, I want the big family get together but not necessarily at the ceremony or breakfast just at some point.

3. My boyfriend is very committed to me and marriage will not make him love me more or less. After thinking it over I don't think that I would feel any less loved or secure in my relationship just because we didn't get married. I see from the responses on here that marriage is the legal contracty bit and the wedding is the emotional bit so maybe when we have kids or have expensive assets like a house then we should consider marriage more seriously.

It's funny but when I read the comments that said "if he doesn't want to get married then he's not that into you" or similar I thought, that's not true I know he loves me very much but when I first started this thread that's what I thought! When it was spelled out to me by someone else I realised that my relationship is strong and that is more important.

I mentioned marriage to my boyfriend last night, I told him that I want him and that I would like to get married at some point in the future but I can wait until he is ready. I told him that I want a marriage not a big circus wedding. He seemed happy with this scenario (he was very affectionate and smiley afterwards!) and everything is OK now.

Thanks for all the responses on here, it really helped me think everything through.

Leona

marshmallows

My husband had been married and divorced before i met him. When we first met we were friends for a good 4/5 months and he was a bit anti marriage which i cant blame
We started dating and after 3 years he proposed, obviously we had the marriage conversations etc in our relationship. I am quite old fashioned in the sense that i wouldnt have children outside of marriage. I feel as though if i cant make a commitment like marriage to a partner and vice versa then we cant make the commitment of having a child together.
We have been married just over a year and although it doesnt seem much different i love the little things, having the same surname, getting wife cards etc

Of course its down to everyones own views on marriage and relationships

I dont believe its an expensive piece of paper because wedding are as cheap or as expensive as you make them

kettlefish

Marriage was very important to me for the reasons outlined by other posters. Although we met young (I was 18 and was just finishing my A levels, he was 23) we got engaged after 16 months and married 10 months after that in October 2009. It was also important as we had been through a lot (his folks died when he was in his late teens and wills hadn't been sorted, the house was a hell hole and he hadn't really come out of his depression) and felt that getting married would demonstrate our lifetime commitment to each other. Also, his NOK would have been some aunt or uncle who didn't know I existed. By taking his name and becoming his wife I feel we demontrated that although the family he would always love had gone, he was part of a new family with me, and an extended family of my parents, grandparents etc. Our wedding had 85 day guests wined and dined, and 120 evening guests. It cost £6500 which was what we could afford (mum and dad helped) but if it would have been a case of me, him and 2 witnesses I would have still done it. I love being his wife and knowing that when we have children we will all have the same name etc. I think our marriage is worth so much more than a piece of paper.

euronorris

CelticStar wrote: »

I also get tired of hearing about the one third of marriages end in divorce statistic as statistically (as recently reported on the news) it is far more likely that a cohabiting partnership will break up than a married couple.

Ah yes, but of course more cohabiting couples split up. Most people live together these days, before getting married.

So, included in that statistic are a fair number of people who split within 1 or 2 years of moving in together, having realised that they aren't going to work in the long term, which kinda skews the results.

It would be a bit like looking at the number of engaged couples who split up. I'm willing to bet that number is also very high, but it doesn't mean that all engaged couples are any more or less committed than a co-habiting or married couple.

A lot of people view co-habitation and/or an engagement period, as a trial run to ensure that marriage is right for them as a couple. And, inevitably, a fair percentage of those couples then realise it isn't right for them and move on. But, those couples should not (IMO) be put in the same group as long standing, co-habiting couples who have no intention of getting married.

CelticStar

euronorris wrote: »

Ah yes, but of course more cohabiting couples split up. Most people live together these days, before getting married.

So, included in that statistic are a fair number of people who split within 1 or 2 years of moving in together, having realised that they aren't going to work in the long term, which kinda skews the results.

It would be a bit like looking at the number of engaged couples who split up. I'm willing to bet that number is also very high, but it doesn't mean that all engaged couples are any more or less committed than a co-habiting or married couple.

A lot of people view co-habitation and/or an engagement period, as a trial run to ensure that marriage is right for them as a couple. And, inevitably, a fair percentage of those couples then realise it isn't right for them and move on. But, those couples should not (IMO) be put in the same group as long standing, co-habiting couples who have no intention of getting married.

Some interesting points, but the research I read was about cohabiting couples who had children - so who, presumably, weren't just test driving domestic conditions out on one another but who considered that they were in
a rather more serious relationship. Of course, this presupposes that the couples involved did consider having children as a commitment, which is something I questioned from a male point of view in my previous post.

seven-day-weekend

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

My husband lived with someone for several years and I know she would have liked to have got married. When I asked him what he said to her about this he said that he told her it was a pointless piece of paper which they didn't need.
He asked me to marry him within a week of getting together and we've been married now for over 20 years.

Read between the lines; he's really not that into you!

I absolutely agree ONW, we got engaged after three weeks and married after four months,we were 21 and 22. (we had both been engaged to other people before,but not lived together).

I don't think ALL cases of co-habiting mean lack of commitment, but I think many do. There is another post on this thread where the guy tells all the excuses he has made for not getting married and admits that in the end it was because he did not want to marry that particular person.

If marriage means 'just a piece of paper' to one person and a great deal to the other, then if the one to whom it is a piece of paper loves the other one enough they will marry anyway, to make the one to whom it means a lot happy.

Excuses, much of it.

seven-day-weekend

Eton_Rifle wrote: »

I have to say though, because it is a legal contract, I think it can be considered almost romantic. As a husband, I'm saying I love you so much that I want to give you half of everything I own - even if we split up, even if we eventually fall out, I care so much about you that I will ensure that you have some protection and entitlements. I'm not going to turn my back on you.
Now that is love.

Absolutely brilliant post.

Primrose

I feel marriage is hugely important. The emotional security which a good marriage provides is, I feel, greatly underestimated. To know that there is another person in the world who has made a public commitment to love and support you through thick and think is hugely sustaining on an emotional front. Yes, of course many couples can have a good relationship without tying the knot but to my mind, somebody who cannot bring themselves to make a public commitment will always be giving a little message out that that they are not prepared to make a 100% commitment to that relationship.

Quite apart from anything else, if you truly love somebody, you will want the best for them, even in circumstances where you may not longer be there to love, provide for and support them, so the legal/inheritance framework which wraps around the married state is very important. Those who rail against marriage may suddenly find themselves adopting a different view if they find themselves with children to support, sitting beside the death bed of their partner who has made no legal or inadequate provision for them because their relationship is not protected by the framework of marriage.

Lunar_Eclipse

It was very important to me and I didn't want to have children outside wedlock.

I love being married and am quite sure I'd do it all again in hindsight. I took my wedding vows seriously and have a very strong urge to make it work, which is in another league to my level of commitment pre-wedding. I have also always said I will only marry once.