Unfocused Content

If there is anything I am an authority on, it is relationship success. Many of you know that my wife and I have been together since the dawn of man (give or take a year) and given that I am neither especially rich nor especially attractive, one can only assume that she hangs around because I make her laugh more than I make her cry. Also neither of us can afford a divorce attorney. So, in anticipation of my forthcoming e- booklet, “The Key to a Successful Marriage: Hide the Knives,” I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you an excerpt from chapter 1 “It’s not who you marry, it’s where you get married.

Many people overlook this important point when planning a wedding because they get wrapped up in the other important details like the pattern of lace on the table cloths or the music that will be playing long after most of the guests have forgotten whose wedding they’re attending. In fact, most people just sort of get married right where they are, even if they are in DeMoines.

While this seems convenient for family members, friends and that guy down the street that does wedding photos on the weekend, it really is short-sighted in terms of long-term marriage success. For instance, my wife’s brother, who we’ll call “John,” has decided to cast off the shackles of single life and marry a girl that he met this summer. They are so eager to tie the knot (and move in together) that they have settled on an April wedding. April of this year – like 60 days away. (No, she’s not, I asked.) They have also decided to follow my advice and not get married in Denver (where John’s family resides) or the Dakota territories (where the girl’s family resides.) Instead, they started planning a beach wedding by looking at a map of the world and selecting the beach furthest away from anything.

At first we balked at this because to get four plane tickets, four passports and four days off of work in April would be a costly endeavor for us. We pointed out that we were already traveling to Washington in March to bury a grandpa, and so to turn around the next month and go to Fiji or The Republic of Congo would be a bit much, monetarily. We also pointed out that our entire United States was surrounded by oceans, making for some nice beaches right here on the mainland. They agreed that we might not be able to get passports in time, so they have settled (and I mean settled) on a wedding on St.John.

If you don’t know anything about St. John, you are not alone. I have perused the web for information about this mysterious place, and I have found very little. I know that it is a US Virgin Island (no relation) so you do not need a passport to go there. (Unless you are not currently living in the US.) I also know that they had a minister of tourism in 1982, and she built them a website, but she died tragically while being eaten by a Virgin Island Tree Boa and no one has updated the site since then. (Definitely Web 0.5)

I applaud John and his girl on making the right decision here. Had they married in Denver, we might have foolishly spent the $2,000US on booze or the mortgage. But, this might have jeopardized their marriage – even more than marrying after a brief courtship or not living together to make sure they actually like each other.

But, now that the money is spent, I’m sort of getting excited. I realized while flying from Denver to Dallas that, if we had crashed, my best case scenario would have been to live out my days on a farm in Oklahoma. There are very few Kates in Oklahoma. But, for the first time in my life, I’ll be flying over the ocean in April, so I’ll have a decent shot of using my seat as a flotation device and turning up on a desert island with polar bears. What more could a guy ask for?

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