Making a Marriage Proposal Special

When you become engaged what everyone seems to want to know is how the “proposer” popped the question. Was the marriage proposal given in a traditional manner down on one knee, looking up in the shining surprised eyes of the bride to be? Or was it given as a spur of the moment gesture after a good night out? Was it delivered with romantic words either from the man’s heart, or remembered from a love poem? Or was it more of a slurred just audible whisper before the wine took over and he fell asleep on the sofa?

For the couple, the marriage proposal is the start of the wedding. It’s the catalyst that starts a chain of events, which will lead to one of the most stressful, yet treasured, days in a woman’s life. For this reason, if no other, it should be given a fitting setting – somewhere romantic, memorable, an intimate moment between two separate people about to embark on a life together.

When you first realize that you are dating the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, that’s the time to start planning the marriage proposal. Don’t rush this. Try to discover what your partner thinks about public proposals? Do they like them, or do they think that a marriage proposal should be something between the couple alone? Do you think that they would enjoy doing a once-in-a-lifetime experience that ended in the proposal, or would they perhaps enjoy a quiet romantic dinner that ended with a ring as sparkling as the wine on the table?

There are many ways to make a marriage proposal special, but some of them will take some forward planning. For instance, you could consider fulfilling a dream your partner has to swim with dolphins, and ask the question when you are both in the water with the graceful animals swimming around you. Alternatively, how about a hot air balloon ride over some beautiful scenery such as the Californian vineyards or even an African savannah if you want to go really exotic! You could propose to your beloved underwater on a snorkeling trip, or at the top of a mountain covered in either spring flowers or snow. You could do it yourself, or you could organize for someone else – such as a look-alike celebrity or local personality – to do it on your behalf. You could give your marriage proposal at the end of a long monologue, or you could just place the ring somewhere she’ll find it at a nice dinner in an expensive restaurant and explain yourself when she finds it.

Is a Las Vegas Marriage for You?

It’s talked about in such a tone of voice that a Las Vegas marriage is almost a cliché. Is it really legal to get married on what could be called – and some actually admit to being – a whim? What makes getting married in Las Vegas so popular? Why do so many couples choose to make it the place for their big day (or night as the case may be in Vegas)?

There are two very different opinions on Las Vegas as a wedding venue. Some people feel that a Las Vegas marriage is something that should avoided like all-in-one tight white suits. Then there are others who see the city as a place to have a wedding that’s unlike anything they’d probably envisaged their own ceremony to be. There are couples who arrive in the city with a Las Vegas marriage their main focus. Then there are others for whom a good night at the tables means a gold band to place beside the extra chips on the hotel dresser.

It’s not possible to just arrive in Vegas and expect to get married however. Even in this fun-filled city, there are formalities that have to be observed. Be prepared to wait in line (on some days a LONG line) for your marriage license for example – without this not even the drive-thru wedding chapel is going to marry you! If you check in advance what you need, and have your paperwork in order, then the processing takes only as long as the line of couples ahead of you take to move along. Once you hold the license you are free to choose the location of your choice – and if you want a Las Vegas marriage, you’ve got plenty of choice!

Many people come to Vegas for a Las Vegas marriage for one thing – Elvis! Memphis may have been Elvis’ home, but Vegas is home to Elvis – or rather his impersonators! For those who have a thing for the King, then Vegas is a must for the perfect wedding. Whether you want to be married by “him”, witness your ceremony, or serenade you as your read your vows, you’ll be able to find a venue that will provide exactly the kind of Elvis wedding you want.

If you and your partner are staying at one of the hotels on the strip, ask at the front desk if you aren’t sure about what your options for venue are. Some of the hotels even have an in-house wedding planner available who can help you find the wedding of your dreams in Vegas. They will be able to advise you on everything from where to find a dress if you haven’t brought one with you, to getting some photographs, and tracking down the perfect venue for your ceremony.

Even without a wedding planner, a Las Vegas wedding is fairly simple to arrange however. With some of the venues open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, there’s usually some time available for a reservation at the venue of your choosing. Talks to the owners of the venue, most of them offer a variety of packages that range from tacky to tasteful with everything in between. Whether you want the whole nine yards of flowers, photos, video, and specially created vows along with your ceremony – or whether you prefer to just complete the legalities and leave – you’ll have no trouble finding what you desire.

Love them or hate them, a Las Vegas wedding is something of an enigma. Initial marriage, special anniversary, or just a blessing in a hotel lobby surrounded by Centurions, Vegas does them all – and what better place could there be to take the biggest gamble of them all, marriage!

How to Save Your Marriage

Many marriages fail because of a lack of communication, a rocky foundation of trust, the inability to spend quality time together, and countless other reasons. In spite of everything, there are ways to help save a marriage that is heading toward negativity. A healthy marriage is comprised of mutual understanding, listening and respecting each other’s differences, accepting arrangements and plans, and overall, having the confidence to work through setbacks and conflict.

It’s important not to blame each other for any conflict, tense situations, or let anger rise out of proportion on a regular basis. In order to save your marriage, it’s going to take time to understand and listen to each other and come to a resolution rather than a crisis. Talking together in s peaceful and safe environment is essential for progress.

Making time for each other consistently is also important in saving your marriage. If you don’t have time for dinner, schedule time for coffee, breakfast, or even doing an activity together where you’ll both have plenty of room to talk, share, and laugh about what’s on your mind. Take a time out from voice mails, e-mails, and switch off the television. A marriage requires a personal commitment just like other responsibilities.

Plan a trip together, or take a mini vacation where you can remember your commitment to one another. This can help re-amplify your marriage, creating the opportunity to rekindle some romance and the positive moments and times you’ve shared together. Remembering your commitment to one another can be a turning point in saving your marriage, a time to honor and cherish.

Remind each other that you’ll get through the rough times, the crisis, or whatever is on your mind together. This can help create a stronger bond, and serve as a stepping stone for the next phase of your life. Ask for support from family and friends if you need to, or make arrangements with a marriage counselor to overcome the difficulty together. Sometimes it helps to have a third party involved so that conflict can be managed effectively with another perspective.

Learning how to cope with stress during marital conflict is important when you want to save your marriage. This can mean taking a break, finding social support, or working directly on the problem together. You can show empathy and love, and avoid criticism. This can strengthen your bond, and also clear the way for deeper feelings for one another.

Having patience will be essential in saving your marriage, and it’s important to maintain balance and perspective if any conflict arises. Patience also involves listening to one another during an argument, and letting each other share views on a subject. Resolving marital conflict may not be easy, but it offers an opportunity for learning and growing. No matter how chaotic life can be, there can always be time to take a deep breath and let things settle. It’s important to be realistic, practice strong communication skills, further your commitment and understanding of one another, and be as patient as possible.

A Venerable Tradition: The History of Marriage

The history of marriage has its origins as least as far back as antiquity and evidence of marriage traditions and ceremonies have existed among people of almost all cultures. While today when we think of marriage our thoughts turn to notions of love and romance, this has not always been the case.

The marriage in the earliest times had little to do with notions of romantic love and more to do with survival. It is believed that the earliest weddings were group events, designed to join together different tribes into a larger family to support and protect each other. The practice of paying a dowry to the family of the bride or the groom, which could include land as well as other types of property, has served throughout the history of marriage to ensure property rights among kinship groups.

Rules governing whom one could marry have existed throughout the history of marriage, and religious and civil law have contained restrictions that have limited marriage options, and intermarriage within a kinship group has often been forbidden. Many countries today continue to enforce laws that prohibit marriage between certain relatives.

Throughout the history of marriage, the majority of unions have been arranged, where the parents have selected whom their children will marry. While the tradition continues in some cultures today, most modern marriages are based on romantic love, with couples deciding freely to marry.

Many of the traditions surrounding contemporary weddings can be traced throughout the history of marriage. Wedding rings date as far back as Egyptian society, where the circle symbolized eternity. The Egyptians’ belief that the fourth finger of the left hand was connected to the heart established the tradition of wedding rings being worn on that finger.

The multi-layered, highly decorated cakes that are common today are a recent addition to the wedding ceremony, first becoming popular around the late nineteenth century. They replaced the loaves of bread that were historically broken during the wedding ceremony.

The tradition of bridegrooms in the wedding party is said to have its roots in the era of very early history when a man would rely on his friends to abduct a woman from her family for his bride. The practice of bridegrooms and bridesmaids dressing alike is a long-standing one in the history of marriage, based on the superstition, which holds that evil spirits might wish harm on the couple and the similarity in dress would confuse them.

While we think that white wedding dresses have always been popular, the tradition is a recent one in the history of marriage, with its origins in 1840, when Queen Victoria wore a white gown at her wedding to Prince Albert of Saxe. By the turn of the twentieth century, most brides in western cultures embraced the white wedding dress.

Many people of many cultures have embraced ceremonial symbols practiced in ancient wedding ceremonies today. The marriage ceremony in Bali includes the couple eating a dish of yellow rice, a symbol of fertility, and in the West rice is thrown at weddings to wish the couple fertility, prosperity and luck.

Common law marriages, defined as when a couple lives together without obtaining a marriage certificate, have been recognized throughout the history of marriage. Some governments continue to recognize common law marriages after the couple has lived together for a certain amount of time. Most governments today, however, require that couples register their union and obtain some type of marriage certificate as legal proof of their relationship.

So while we can see, while much has changed throughout the history of marriage since ancient times, many of our contemporary traditions have deep historical roots.

How to Find Happiness in a Marriage

It is very important to find both present moment happiness and joy about the future. Happiness is the fuel for a meaningful life without it we cannot seem to get off the ground. How to find happiness in a marriage is not always an easy solution you have to work for it. You must focus on the things that you have in order to find happiness in your marriage.

Most folks like to dwell on the things that they do not have and even pine over them. This plainly put in the Bible by Jesus; states do not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his house, fields, money, anything that is not yours do not covet. This may seem like a simple commandment to follow but in some people, it is rather difficult. You see they have not found happiness in their own life so therefore they do not know how to find happiness in a marriage.

How to find happiness in a marriage stems from the factor that you already have found happiness in your own life. In ordinary times, people know what they are blessed with. Others, who just simply crave what ever they see and want it badly usually, are never happy for their worldly possessions cannot fill the empty void inside of them.

How to find happiness in a marriage begins with everybody finding happiness with God. God will help you through your mood swings and lift you up helping you to forget worries. Happiness is the normal state of humanity. Look at a baby and watch it smile. The baby does not want anything in return, it is truly happy. For the next three days spend time looking for your moments of happiness. Each moment in your life kept filled with pleasure will help you to keep happiness in your marriage. Please count the moments of happiness that you have felt. Then think about some of the material things, are they put away or gone? The material things seemingly just disappear while moments of happiness linger with us forever.

How to find happiness in a marriage is by your attitude. True happiness is an attitude of noticing the good constantly coming our way. You will find that there is so much good coming every minute, there is no need to hand onto the past. We need to grasp onto a rope to keep ourselves from drowning even on dry land. The trick to finding happiness in our own lives and that of our marriage is to get into the habit of looking for good things, instead of griping all day about everything that has gone wrong. Joy gives us a feeling of power and energy. Joy means being excited about now and about the future. I always believed to find really JOY in your life that you need to follow these simple basic rules. First, you need to put Jesus first in your life, Others next in your life, and then yourself, last! That has always been my recipe for a happier more joyful life and marriage with my husband.

Common Law Marriage

Many Americans believe that if they are together for a specific length of time, like seven years, that they are engaged in a common law marriage. That is an old myth that is “busted.” While some states do recognize common law marriage, they are few and their restrictions are stringent.

Research has found that couples that practice common law marriage are up to three times more likely to suffer a divorce than traditional marriage types unless you have premarital education and participate in common law marriage with the first and only person you live with.

Because the laws of all states that recognize common law marriage require death or formal divorce to dissolve a common law marriage, you are not skirting your obligations or the gravity of commitment by foregoing a formal wedding.

All states that provide for common law marriage require that both parties be of majority age, 18 years old. Common law marriage requirements are listed below for all states that recognize such a union:

Alabama – mental capacity to enter into agreement; agree to be married and consummation of the relationship

Colorado – present yourself as married and cohabitate

Iowa – intend to be and stay married, continuous cohabitation and public declaration of marriage

Kansas – mental capacity and legal ability to marry, agree to marry and publicly represent that you are married

Montana – capacity to consent, agree to marry, cohabitate and have a reputation of being married

Oklahoma – competency, agree to marry and cohabitate

Pennsylvania – verbal exchange of agreement to marry and a plan to stay married

Rhode Island – serious intent to stay married and conduct of a married couple

South Carolina – represent yourself as a married couple

Texas – signed form at their local county clerk’s office, agree to marry, cohabitate and behave as husband and wife

Utah – capable of giving consent and a reputation of being married

Washington, D.C. – cohabitate and express intent to be husband and wife

There are a few ways you can represent yourself as a married couple. The first is to tell the community you are married. The second is to use the same last name. The third is to file joint income tax returns and the fourth is to share in financial obligations (mortgage, lease, car loan, utilities, etc.)

Georgia used to grant common law marital status but discontinued this on January 1, 1997. If you met the state requirements prior to that date and have been involved in the same relationship continuously, your relationship is still recognized as a common law marriage.

The same is true in Idaho, though they stopped the practice of granting common law marital status on January 1, 1996. Ohio also discontinued their common law marriage laws on October 10, 1991. Pennsylvania stopped granting common law marriage status on January 1, 2005.

A common law marriage must be dissolved as any other marriage – by divorce or death. There is no “common law divorce”; simply leaving the relationship does not diminish your responsibility to your common law husband or wife.

If you intend to live with someone as a married couple but do not wish to enter into a common law marriage, you should each sign an agreement stating that you are each free, independent entities and do not wish to marry or become committed in the eyes of the law.

The United States Constitution requires that all states recognize marriages that are legal in another state. That means that you are free to move to a “non-common law marriage state” from a state which you have established this commitment. Please note, however, that the rights of married couples do vary from state to state.

What is Marriage?

Some may wonder what is marriage? To some marriage means belonging to one person and one person only. Others look at marriage as something much more sacred that just belonging, it is when it brings two souls together as one. Marriage might mean that they finally just can‘t live without the other in their life and want to spend every minute of the rest of their lives together.

What is marriage and how is it different from the past? Today marriage is different from what it used to be like. Long ago getting married meant getting married at a young age, or saving your virginity until marriage. Today, you may wait until your 30 or 40s before ever attempting to tie the knot. As for being a virgin, most people are no longer virgins before they wed, but there are still some virgin brides. The courtships seem to last many years before you actually set a date and marry. Young lovers want to know they can live together and see what marriage will be like, they want to make sure they’ve finished college and started jobs.

What is marriage like with and without religion? This can be different for many people, if you’ve grown up with religion in your home and it was a very big deal it still will be and it is something you’ll definitely want in your marriage. However for those that never grew up with it they may not see the importance of having religion in the marriage or even in their life. Make sure you know what type of person you are marrying; if this is a key thing it will become a big issue for the wedding and after. Before getting married many may have a different view on the type of wedding ceremony you have. Someone may want a catholic wedding while others may think a protestant wedding is best, to avoid all conflict one may even choose not to have any type of religion at their wedding. If you plan on having a religious ceremony make sure you follow all procedures, sometimes a priest will want to meet with the happy couple for counseling before ever performing the wedding.

What is marriage like when it is legal? Some couples wonder if they should even make their marriage legal or just stay living together. To some marriage is only something that is a piece of paper saying they are legally together. For those they may not want to have just a paper to tell them how important it is, especially if they’ve already lived together for a few years. In a few states, couples that live together a certain amount of time, normally seven years or more, are considered to have a common law marriage. A marriage that is legal is one that is performed by a minister or someone that is qualified to perform the ceremony. Once the ceremony is complete the bride and groom will sign a piece of paper and a few weeks later get a certificate in the mail, in the meantime you will be given a document to show proof of marriage.

So before you think about marriage think about what is marriage. You don’t want to jump into a marriage because you thought marriage meant one thing and ended up being something entirely different, that‘s where divorce ends up coming in. Think long and hard about what is marriage and what it means to you. Don’t forget to ask your loved one what is marriage to them. You wouldn’t want to find out the two of you have different views on marriage. Make your marriage a lasting one, after all that’s what is marriage, one that lasts forever.