Call me jaded, call me married-for-too-long, but I look at engaged couples, bright, shiny and new and watch on, incredulously. They float around planning their “special day”, spending tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours on the perfect wedding, as though that will protect them from their fair share of relationship issues that those of us who’ve been married for several years know are inevitable.
Spared from the fantasy of the perfect wedding myself – in part due to the fact it was my husband’s second wedding and he was reluctant to make it into such a huge production – I wanted a small, simple, affordable wedding that didn’t take on more importance than the marriage myself. There was just one problem. My parents.
I knew they’d never let me get way with having a small-ish wedding so my fiance and I conspired together to ensure we achieved the budget wedding of our dreams. I was the one who came up with an idea so evil, so genius, so guaranteed to work that I impressed myself and even scared myself a little.
And left my future husband feeling slightly disturbed by my manipulative genius, I’m sure.
Mamamia Confessions: My biggest wedding regret. Article continues after this video.
I concluded that if we were to fall pregnant first, my conservative Italian parents would be so desperate for us to marry that they’d go along with whatever wedding we slapped together. And they pretty much did, except for my mum who bought a veil and practically chased me down the make-shift isle and shoved it into my hair and even made me a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses which she handed to me to use for the day, even though I had no plans to have a bouquet because the smell of flowers, Rexona Sport and frying onions left my pregnant-self feeling incredibly ill.
Shotgun wedding, done, and on budget. I fessed up to them a few years later.
Australian couples spend an average of $36,000 on their wedding day and 21 months planning it, according to the Easy Wedding Annual Wedding Survey 2015. Not one cent of this is spent on counselling sessions aimed and ensuring marital happiness. Compulsory pre-marriage counselling that used to be run by religious organisation is no longer compulsory. By the time most couples run into trouble in their relationships and seek couple’s counselling, the relationship is beyond repair which gives couple’s counselling a bad rap because we all know a couple or two who sought marriage counselling only to end up splitting, leaving us believing that couple’s counselling doesn’t work.