The saying goes "A wedding is a day, a marriage is a lifetime."
We are living in a day and age when married couples are a minority. Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce. Yup, that's right, 50 percent of all marriages don't make it. And if you happen to be crazy enough to get married for a second or even a third time, 67 percent of all second marriages end in divorce and that percentage goes up to 74 percent for third marriages.
I understand that when a woman gets engaged it is such an exhilarating moment and then you can't wait to start organizing the wedding of your dreams. However, that fairy tale wedding that you are going to start planning has nothing to do with your actual relationship. Furthermore, it has very little to do with your husband-to-be and EVERYTHING to do with you. What normally happens is the woman goes off on a tangent planning every last aspect of the wedding instead of putting that energy and enthusiasm into her relationship. You can't have a fairy tale wedding that leads to a fairy tale marriage unless you work on making sure your relationship is everything you have ever dreamed about.
My husband and I have been together for ten years and married for five. After about a year or so, we were so madly in love with each other we said we didn't even care about getting married. The only reason we got engaged is so we could tell my terminally ill Mother we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. And the only reason we got married was because my Dad's dream was to always walk me down the aisle, because he was never going to have that chance with my sister, who is mentally challenged. We also did it as a celebration of our love with just family and incredibly close friends -- we barely had 80 people at our wedding!
I am not saying that getting engaged and getting married cannot be something beautiful and special, but I would have to say people are still getting married for the wrong reasons. Yes, I'm going to mention it: Kim Kardashian's wedding fiasco and 72-day marriage was disgusting and an insult on so many levels. I'm not going to get into it, we've heard it all up until now, but how is it possible that that was her fairy tale wedding if the marriage was so short? That was just an ostentatious, over-the-top, Hollywood event for show, marketing and ratings, not a fairy tale wedding. There are, of course, a slew of other celebrity-related weddings that are just as obnoxious and are horrible examples of what a fairy tale wedding should not be, because they never last, but one example is enough.
Women, make sure you are working on making your relationship a fairy tale. That every time you are with your man you experience this sensation of bliss that you can't put into words. That he is everything you have ever wanted in your husband-to-be and that you are everything that he wants in a wife-to-be. There is truly no rush to get married, because let's face it, you will have your whole lives together. You need to take the time to know every aspect about your man: his family, his friends, his hopes, dreams and desires; his favorite color and food; what side of the bed he likes to sleep on; how he handles things when times are tough and what he does when times are good; how he gets along with your friends and family; does he want a child, three children, or none, and the list goes on. Oh and by the way, this all applies to him getting to know you, too.
I know that the wedding day is an important part of a young woman's life, but we don't want that one day to be a fairy tale moment, we want everyday for years to come be like living a fairy tale.