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Monday 18 July 2016

Marriage lasts longer than a day

It's been a while since I've written anything now- I always seem to think of ideas of posts I want to write and then frustratingly never have enough time to write them. I've been home from Uni for around a month- so it is officially summer! I have been trying to make the most of the sun (well today at least- which is pretty much the first time I've actually seen it!), but now I need to get back into writing regularly!

It was just as I finished the year at University that I went to my first wedding. My cousin had been with her partner for around eight years before he proposed, and a year and a half later they celebrated their love on their wedding day. It is true that they waited a long time to do so however, and this made me think about the prevalence of marriage in today's society. They chose a civil partnership rather than a religious service and, given that they had been living together for a few years now, I question whether weddings are seen as a necessity by our society today or have they merely become a luxury.

Obviously within this post I mean to discuss secular marriage- religious marriage is an entirely different concept and one which for many theists is a necessary stepping stone within the course of their lives. This said, I question what marriage actually means to those who do not follow a religion.

We all know marriage and weddings as fundamentally religious traditions. However, with the growth of the secular society has come the introduction of a non-religious wedding ceremony, within which the only promises made are those to each other. Do we see it as important then to make promises in front of other people in order that they are validated? Is it not enough to merely promise to one another, in the privacy and calm of your own home?

Evidently in a relationship there needs to be an element of trust, and if you are in such a committed relationship to live with each other already; why is there a need to promise each to one another to be faithful? Surely that is a mutually understood concept at the start of the relationship? Personally I believe marriage nowadays seems to have become a mere tradition; one about which the meaning has been lost. They say girls from a young age dream of their wedding day; the dress, the flowers, the rings, but as many will tell you, marriage lasts longer than a day. Therefore, if marriage is not equal to a wedding day, then maybe you can have a marriage without a wedding? This is what I personally would term living together. Yes, a wedding provides certain legal rights but in terms of the fundamentals of marriage- a wedding day does not equip you with the means to live together for the rest of your lives.