I am somebody who does not believe in marriage. I personally believe it is a complete waste of time and money, not exactly romantic I know, and that it can actually do more harm than good. The latest reports on the long term success of marriage confirmed that one in two marriages end in divorce and that the majority of these divorces are granted within the first ten years of married life. Well that’s a good stat isn’t it? Makes you want to walk up the isle next week doesn’t it? At the end of the day I like to keep things in a sense of reality, the reality is that the majority of marriages fail.

As you will no doubt tell as you read through this article I am in no way involved in the “marriage industry”; I am actually involved in offering promotional magic cubes.

In September of last year I was invited to attend a wedding of a good friend of mine. The day arrived and I drove my family to the hotel where the ceremony was taking place. Boy was it a lavish affair! There were violinists playing as you entered the venue and the whole event was, in my opinion, far too over done. The “happy couple” must have spent a small fortune and I know for a fact that they did not receive any “outside help” from either set of parents.

In November, only two months after the wedding, the groom was made redundant from a company where he had worked for the last nine years. He does not possess the most impressive of cv’s and is still out of work today.

He has told me that the wedding has put him into debt in rather a big way but that it would have been OK if he had not have lost of job. Well we are in a credit crunch; we are in a recession; that is what happens I’m afraid.

It is time to get our heads out of the clouds and into the real world. Getting yourself in debt just so that your girlfriend can be a princess for the day is madness – this is 2011 and times are very tough out there “in the real world”.