Way back in the 60’s, when the Beatles were seldom off the top of the pop charts, my father used to shake his head in mild disapproval. I am not sure he knew what he was disapproving of, but something significant was happening beneath the social fabric of western society. The old order was on the wane. New uncharted waters lay ahead. Nowhere is the outcome of that quiet revolution more dramatically felt than in its effect on marriage. Over the last three decades the incidence of marriage between two people of the opposite sex has been in dramatic decline. The divorce rate has escalated. The number of couples just living together in ‘partnerships’ (it used to be called ‘sin’) has become commonplace. The lawmakers are running to catch up with the inevitable implications of these trends and their effects upon the rights of children and partners living in the web of complicated serial relationships, not all of which are of the same sex.

We all have our own analysis of the situation, reasons why marriages go wrong. Apparently there is no family in the west that has not been affected by a marriage breakup somewhere in their ranks. Many young people of marriageable age have decided not to ‘take the plunge’ having experienced, sometimes first hand, the trauma of the breakdown of the marriage of parents, brothers, sisters, friends, etc. But people of all ages still decide that marriage is for them. That’s encouraging. Marriage is not dead as some pundits claim.
Perhaps the most common reason given for not getting married is ‘we can’t afford it.’

‘Really? What can’t you afford?’

‘By the time we’ve added in the cost of the reception for x number of people at y location, and the cake and the booze and the photographer and the video and the disco and the cars and the clothes and the flowers and….etc…etc.’

Does a marriage really need that sort of wedding to be real and lasting? Certainly not, judging by the weddings that take place here at St. Christopher’s, Bahrain.

Forget the wedding planner, the razzmatazz and the hugely inflated cost. Money can’t buy you love. A sincere, deeply meaningful ceremony between two people, with a minimum of two witnesses, in the sight of God is worth as much if not more than those grand but stressful occasions which too often come tumbling down in despair.

It’s time to rethink expectations, not of marriage but weddings. The two are continually being confused. There’s the problem. Marriage is the important thing, and might prove more frequently durable if the wedding were kept in proper perspective and not seen as a commercial opportunity for a burgeoning wedding industry on the ‘make’ - the means rather than the end to a lasting, loving and committed relationship for life.

Alan Hayday


See link to some relevant material by Prof.Wm. Barclay (webmaster)