Nearly Beloved! Do We Invest MORE On The Day Than On The Lifetime?

On June 28, 1986 at 7:00 pm in the evening at the Birmingham Wedding Chapel in Alabama I said I DO to my husband Tony! If you go to The KISS and Jennifer Keitt Show FACEBOOK PAGES (http://www.facebook.com/thejenniferkeittshow) you can see my wedding day picture. That was 27 years ago and we spent about $4,500.00 TOTAL—including my dress and our gold wedding bands. My hair was a HOT MESS…my daughter’s say the dress that I said YES to was classic 80’s and my reception was sparse to say the least—but hey, 27 years later, I’m still standing in marriage!

Today, the average wedding costs about $28,000.00 dollars and I found out this week—when I did an interview with Lori Allen and Monte Durham from TLC’S Say Yes To The Dress—that they have gowns in Lori’s store upwards of $20,000.00 dollars! Veils can cost as much as $2,000.00 dollars! That’s a TON of money to spend on the first day of what is supposed to be the rest of your life with someone!

I’m wondering, though, do we spend that much in time and preparation to STAY married? Nowadays I’m even questioning is marriage becoming OBSOLETE? With the number of couples opting for a variety of different configurations—from FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS to LONG-TERM boyfriend/girlfriend to LONG-TERM “piece” on the side, baby-mommas, baby-daddys and the status of being NOT married yet NOT single, hmmmm…I wonder, where does MARRIAGE fit in? Why are so many people opting out of saying “I DO” for a lifetime?

Now let me keep it real, I broke all the rules before getting married. Tony & I lived together for three years before tying the knot. According to most of the research, because we lived together, we were more likely to never get married, and according to the research we should have divorced within the first 7 years of our marriage. Well Tony proposed and we got married two weeks after I graduated from college. Because I was in my final semester I didn’t have time to plan a wedding. I was 22 years old! I didn’t know ANYTHING about weddings let alone getting married! We found a wedding chapel and the man who ran the chapel was also a wedding planner! We sat down one time with George, answered his questions about colors and flowers and punch—and I let him have at it as I hustled to finish up my degree.

Well why didn’t someone tell me that weddings bring out the drama and the crazy in your family? My Dad decided to act the biggest fool because—of all things—Tony & I wanted a DRY wedding…no booze. Now I know some of ya’ll choked on that one…but yeah, we opted for no alcohol! Honestly, I believe he gave me grief because he and my Mom at that time were in between divorce and child support and he wanted leverage. Well, I gave him the leverage…and leveraged him right out of the wedding! Yep…my younger brother gave me away on that day. Of course, I never lived that one down with my Dad. Between finishing my broadcasting degree…trying to coordinate a wedding and dealing with all of my FAMILY drama…Tony and I didn’t even think about how we were going to BE married and STAY married after June 28th!

I think back now and ask myself, “GIRL WERE YOU CRAZY?!” C’mon now, who would drive a car without lessons? Who can get a degree in any field without studying? Who would attempt to build a home without a blueprint or instructions? Yet, we get married without so much as a CLUE! We go on our “feelings!” WHAT?! It’s nothing short of a miracle that I was able to get and stay married to the same man for all these years.

I don’t want anyone to have to go through the hell that I went through. So let’s talk about where we are today. Has marriage become obsolete?

You know what I think part of the problem is?

We’re afraid. We’re afraid of failing at marriage, so we don’t bother to commit to it. We don’t know how to stay married, so we don’t try. We don’t value long-term commitment or “the piece of paper” as some call it so marriage doesn’t cross our minds.

Yet, I know there’s something DEEP INSIDE many of us that want a soulmate. We want to be with the love of our lives every day. We want long-term be with you forever kind of live. We want happiness and the contentment of knowing that someone loves us and cares enough to be with us for the rest of our lives.

How do we get there? That’s why I’m doing this show. So we can think about what we really want.

I think we’ve got to start EDUCATING ourselves about marriage. I had NO IDEA that there was a class or counseling that I could have gotten BEFORE I got married! Pre-marital counseling—I’d never heard of it! I didn’t realize that my wedding day wouldn’t help me ONE BIT when the you know what hit the fan and we had our first married-persons argument! Which dress I said YES to, was irrelevant when he got on my last nerve. When the kids came, what our guests ate at the wedding didn’t matter!

Are we investing more on our wedding day than on the marriage? LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE.

I am your chief empowerment officer JENNIFER KEITT. The Jennifer Keitt Show on KISS 104, Atlanta’s R&B, is heard every Sunday from 7-8 pm ET. Be sure to download your free ToolKEITT for the Nearly Beloved Show. It’s full of resources, questions and links to help you as you are decided whether marriage is right for you. It’s on my website at http://www.jenniferkeitt.com.

 

 

TURNING A ROYAL WEDDING INTO A REAL MARRIAGE

C’mon, what’s really the fascination with William and Kate getting married? Now, I have to admit like everyone else, I am waiting with bated breath to see what Kate’s dress is going to look like on Friday as she walks down the aisle of Westminster Abby. But I had to ask myself, why do I really care? The answer, for me, was simple. I, like most of the world, LOVE weddings—especially ROYAL WEDDINGS! I think “surely with a start like that it’s bound to work!” (Don’t we kind of look at marriages today like we’re looking at the betting odds in Vegas?!) But I am hoping, wishing, praying even that Will and Kate will beat the divorce odds (that are in his own family) and will conquer the beast of marriage and I am hoping that they truly will live, “happily ever after…”

Will and Kate’s impending nuptials have me going into my memory vault to my own marriage archives and pulling off of those dusty shelves my story of the nervous, excited, bubbly thoughts, feelings, hopes and desires that I had 48 hours before my big day, 25 years ago. Looking back I honestly didn’t have a clue (no more than Kate and William have)! I don’t care how long you’ve dated, how much you think you know before you say I do, YOU DON’T until you transition from the wedding to being married.

I’ve scanned the volumes of history my marriage to Tony has produced and I want to say to Will and Kate and to anyone who wants to turn a “Royal Wedding” into a “Real Marriage” use these simple strategies to help in the process:

1.       LISTEN INWARD BEFORE JUDGING OUTWARD

Be intentional about listening to what’s really going on inside YOU first before judging what your spouse is doing or saying! When I learned to ask myself, “Why are you upset that he’s late?” BEFORE I jumped on Tony for being late, I learned a lot (about myself of course but also about how to diffuse arguments or disagreements BEFORE they got started).  My prayer for Will and Kate is that they too will be quick to listen to what’s going on inside their own hearts and heads before they judge one another. I hope the future King and Queen learn quickly how to correct, judge and adjust their own hearts first BEFORE they judge the other person.  After many years of practicing this principle, life became so much easier with Tony, because I figured out, if I figured out what was going on with me, I didn’t need to “fix” what I felt was wrong with him!

2.       DEVELOP AN ELASTIC MIND

An elastic mind is one that stretches far and wide to embrace who our spouse is becoming rather than being rigid in our expectation that they will stay the same. I woke up one day after 20 or so years of marriage and looked at Tony and realized he’s NOT the man I married all those years earlier. He’d changed! A new man had invaded his body—complete with a different perspective, a different take on life and different thoughts, ideas and behaviors.

And I loved it.

You see men and women DON’T stay the same (or at least they shouldn’t). And after the royal wedding day is finished and the cake crumbs are swept away, the music fades and the wedding dress is packed away, you and I and Will and Kate will have to realize that humans aren’t designed to stay the same. The man or woman you marry today will inevitably want to expand, and explore different careers, different hobbies, different educational achievements; they will want to grow. And our minds MUST become elastic enough to stretch with our mates newness and becoming! I hope Will and Kate especially get this, so that as they grow into Monarchs… they will allow the other person to become who they’re destined to be without hesitation.

3.       BUILD LIFE TOGETHER AS BFF’S NOT AS BUSINESS PARTNERS

We can ‘fire’ our business partners. We’re not likely to fire our BFF (best-friend-forever) . Best friends are there, always. Best friends are the go-to person. They are the one you share “firsts” with…monumental events, changes in your life—they are the ones who get the phone call first, the 411, the scoop. They are the one we can’t wait to see, can’t wait to be with, can’t wait to “tell, share or laugh with.” BFF’s are the glue that holds our lives together and it’s my feeling that this person can and should be your spouse. Over the years, I can honestly say that Tony has become mine and I his, and I hope that Will and Kate will keep BFF status reserved for one another.

I hope that in the midst of the incredible ‘fish-bowl’ life that the royal couple are embarking on that they will (1) listen to their own hearts first, before judging the other person; (2) they will develop elastic minds capable of expanding to where their partner is growing and (3) that they will build their lives as BFF’s instead of business partners.

This strategy just may help turn this ROYAL WEDDING into a REAL MARRIAGE that lasts for a very long time.