A string quartet pluck a gentle song as you walk into the big, beautiful, echoing church. Maybe there’s even a harp player hidden behind a billowing organza curtain. The church is decorated in ivory ribbon and perfect roses, in any shade you desire. Your mother and father look stunning, hand in hand, dabbing away tears of awe and pride as you, their daughter, begin to walk the aisle, holding your bouquet, blushing behind your veil, looking like a taller, thinner Jessica Rabbit in your designer dress.
As you glide past like you’re on wheels, your ex boyfriend and his obese new girlfriend are sitting in one of the pews. He leans towards you to say “I never should have left you, you look stunning”. You carry on in a whisper of antique lace. You reach the aisle, and the vicar is waiting and smiling in a way that suggests “I’ve seen so many, many brides. But none were even half as beautiful as you.” Your groom turns towards you, handsome in his dark suit. He could be anyone you want him to be. You read your vows in a voice more resonant and emotive than Patrick Stewart, your now husband leans down and kisses you firmly on the mouth. Doves erupt from the ceiling; the whole church bursts into delighted clapping.
Now is about the time I’d wake up screaming. I hate weddings.
I should explain a little more about my unusual situation. Me and C got engaged because we felt like it. I chose the ring, we went together to get it and he proposed there and then in our 1999 rusty Ford KA. My ring is very understated- exactly my kind of thing. A beautiful square-cut diamond on a slender band of platinum. Not wanting him to feel left out, I bought him a ring too, made of tungsten and an unusual burnished grey, which he loves.
We drove home smiling and had pizza. Some might be whittling their wrists over the lack of romance in that but it was exactly what I wanted. Me and C don’t really do romance in that sense. I ran him a bath and filled the bathroom with candles after his mud-encrusted training weekend with the Territorial Army. On my birthday he left me a trail of presents with clues leading to each one. He goes shopping for me and buys hair removal cream and bubble bath without so much as a grunt. I pretend I care about cars, watches, Xbox games and all manner of other boy’s toys. He pretends he cares about eyeliner, my haircut, and why I can’t seem to find the perfect pair of black boots. We make each other laugh. No-one knows us as well as we know each other. He has two scars on the back of his hand where apropos of nothing, his cat bit clean through his hand, whereupon it puffed up like a cheesy wotsit. He knows I have a scar above my left eyebrow from walking into a door when I was 9. He knows I eat brown sauce with white meat and ketchup with red meat. His favourite colour is blue, he likes a glass of milk for breakfast and anything sour- I once saw him eat a lemon like other people eat oranges. He sits with a grin as fixed as a Cheshire cat when every Christmas, my Mum gives me a barrel of her homemade triple strength pickled shallots- each one potent enough to knock out an elephant. The brine is highly explosive; I think it might be banned in some countries. Pregnant women and babies cannot be in the same room as them. Even the smell makes C turn as green as the brine but he watches me as I nosh my way through a tub in 5 seconds flat, never once complaining. He has a scar on his knee from a motorcycle accident, he knows I like waiting at the field down the road from my parents until all the tiny wild rabbits stick their little ears out from the broken flower pots in the field. We know what makes each other laugh, cry, get angry, be lonely and be daft.
As silly as the above may sound, you can only know someone inside out and back to front like that when you really adore them. The little domestic exchanges “beans or no beans?” are the language of love. I already know I want to spend the rest of my life with him. There simply couldn’t be anyone else. I don’t need a band of gold, a stupid puffy dress or one our Uncles getting drunk and embarrassing everyone. I know he loves me. I can just tell. I don’t know if we’ll ever get married, and I don’t mind. Our fate is already sealed- this is forever.
Seeing as this is more of an essay than a story- I’m going to approach it in a structured fashion to avoid rambling. I hope. This is entirely only my perspective and I wish no offence to anyone.
Why I don’t want to get married
1. It makes me feel old
I’m only 24, but being a Mrs would make me feel a lot older. I already do feel old. I’m still 17 with a face full of more metal than a medieval battle working part-time in a shop in my head, not a 24-year-old full-time worker with a sensible haircut, a mortgage and a dependent (a rat, but still.)
2. I hate having my photo taken
My parent’s house looks like a spooky shrine to me as if I died age 11. I don’t appear in any photos after that. Being as I look like a cross between Velma in Scooby Doo and Kelly Osborne, only with worse fashion sense, why would I want to get dressed up and look like a tank in a net curtain to have 5,000 deeply unflattering photos taken of me and sniggered at by the local branch of Boots? No thank you. If I could wear a balaclava, I think I would.
3. I’d be a rubbish wife
I know this isn’t the 1950’s and there is a lot more to women now than how bouncy your sponge is and how crisp your meringues are but I have absolutely nada housewife skills. I can’t cook- in fact I hate cooking- I find it dull and oppressive. I love cooking shows however and eating, just not the bit before the eating comes. I can cook 4 things- a roast, lasagne, a sponge cake and soup. That’s it. I can’t sew, I hate cleaning and have a slapdash approach to it-remove mess from the visible areas and place where it cannot be seen. My well-meaning mother in law tried to tell me how I could get my windows really sparkling and I yawned in her face. I don’t care. It isn’t that C expects me to do these things (he once said to me “I’m hungry” so I threw a bag of crisps at his face and went back to reading) but I feel like I should. I earn merely pennies so can’t contribute on that front. Seeing as C works all weekend every weekend almost, as well as absurd shifts throughout the week, I feel he deserves to come home to me serving roast beef in high heels (me in heels, not the beef) and windows that gleam. Instead, he finds me slumped on the sofa reading a trashy novel in baggy cotton trousers so old they have holes in the knees, surrounded by the detritus of the day, or sitting at my computer furiously typing- wearing my enormous glasses and a bizarre grey smock I found in a charity shop because I think it makes me look “creative.” Poor boy.
4. We don’t want any children
Of course you don’t have to be married to have children, but most people I know intend to get married before they do. We never planned on having any, and we found out 2 years ago I can’t (it’s a long story.) Not a huge issue for us as the thought had never crossed our minds. Me and C are precisely the same when it comes to babies- both having yelled at a colleague waving a tiny thing in a pastel coloured jumpsuit at us “Get that thing away from me!”
5. We’re both really antisocial
I have my friends and C has his- we are not friends with any other couples and I point-blank refuse to be. If we ever become the kind of couple who goes for lunch with “David and Julia”, if C takes up golf or squash and I start going to pottery or cake icing classes with “the girls”, I’m aiming the car for the biggest cliff I can find. Both me and C are far too nasty, cynical and rude to be popular with people- and I’m never happier than when I’m lying on his chest in my rubbish pyjamas (note: C always used to be dressed at home, but I helped him discover his inner slob and now the second we walk through the door the clothing comes off and the ratty pyjamas go on.) If we do go out- very rarely as a couple- our faces settle from one uncomfortable position to another and our clasped hands start to get sweaty. We both know we’d rather be with each other, at home, with the TV remote and a glass of coke. I do venture to pubs with my friends occasionally, but seeing as I don’t drink alcohol except on special occasions, I’m usually home by 10.30pm. Generally, my friends come over to my house for tea and biscuits or lemonade and pizza, while C lies in our bedroom watching gangster films.
6. We can’t afford it
Like most couples I assume. We have bills, we have a mortgage. We simply don’t have the cash to put aside for a wedding- and we both come from enormous families who seem to breed incessantly, meaning it can’t be a polite sit down meal for 20 people and is more like to turn into a 250 person rave up that will cost more than our yearly budget for food.
7. Our families have never met before
We’ve been together for nearly 8 years. We’ve crossed the polite threshold. At the risk of offending anyone in my family or his, I’ll leave this one here.
It is rather odd I’m so anti-marriage. My parents have been married happily for just over 35 years. They have a great relationship as far as I know, if there are any arguments I’ve never been aware of them. My Mum taught me the ideals of a long-term relationships- at the very core of it, my parents are friends. This may sound slightly insane but I have a male friend who incessantly dates girls he fancies but has absolutely zero connection with. My Mum finds my Dad hilarious and my Dad loves my Mum as much as the day they married. They take an equal load in life- the money, the house, the jobs, the children; they work together around the house and with me and my brothers. They have a similar outlook and approach to life- whilst also having enough interests separate from each other to keep a relationship healthy. They’re a walking advert for marriage- how happy it can make a couple.
Two of my colleagues are in their mid-thirties and are literally talking as I write about their lack of marriage, as if it is somehow a crime to not be married by their very young age. I think too much emphasis is put on the wedding itself- I find it horrifying that some women envision their wedding down to the colour of the napkins whilst the groom remains a faceless entity. It really isn’t about the day of the wedding itself, it is about the life you will have afterwards. You are going to be spending the rest of your life with that person, and you have to be sure it’s what you both want. I have seen men and women who have been cajoled, pushed and bullied towards the aisle and I often wonder if it’s what they really want. Unlike a certain lady in the tabloids- I take marriage very seriously. I think when you go through with it; there should be every intention for it to be forever. Of course, marriages and relationships break down sometimes- it isn’t always someone’s fault, you just simply fall out of love with one another.
For some couples, getting married is the best thing they ever did. I’m not saying it cannot lead to happiness nor do I think that everyone has a rather callous attitude towards it- this is simply not true. But I often wonder about people who get married for the day, the dress, the status. I wonder how happy they can really be.
I want to get married in Vegas. I’ve seen a drive in chapel I’m really taken by. Just me, C and a drop-top Mustang. That’s my kind of wedding!
As much as I am against romance and other sticky-sweet things, I could never be against love. As Nat King Cole sang “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved in return.”
Finally, to lift an edited quote from the show Skins which is one of the most moving passages I’ve ever heard and sums up love better than I ever could: –
“You made my life complete. And actually, rather wonderful. People who make us happy are never the ones we expect, so when you find someone, you’ve got to cherish it.”
