How well are you planning for your marriage?

Many people spend more time planning their wedding than they do planning their marriages.
Many intending couples spend months preparing for their wedding day, expending all their life savings and conserving all energy for that day. It’s an important day no doubt, but how well do couples plan for the marriage itself?
Most people mistake wedding ceremonies to be marriages, they are totally two different things. Fatima Mahamud, a 38-year-old accountant says: “After the wedding comes the real marriage. Many people plan for the wedding day and forget that the marriage is all that matters. They forget that the wedding they have planned to be able to impress their friends and people in the society will only last a few days or weeks in the minds of people. But your marriage is what everyone will be watching out for, especially us women, we forget that there is a whole lot awaiting us in marriage than the wedding day. I would rather spend time and money to plan and celebrate my years in marriage than spending so much time and money on my wedding.”
Thirty-eight-year-old teacher Cynthia Akpan, notes that: “My daddy always had this idea of doing the traditional rites, court wedding with two witnesses and church blessings at a Sunday service. I agreed with him. For me, that’s the perfect wedding because elaborate wedding does not mean couples are going to have a good/great marriage. Why should I have an elaborate wedding, spend all that money and energy in planning for the big day when it could end up in a divorce? We should be true to ourselves and learn to cut our coat according to our size. Most times such elaborate weddings are done to impress friends and family and once that is done it is the beginning of trouble because after marriage one of the partners will not be able to come to terms with reality. I always advise intending couples to plan for the marriage which is most likely forever rather than the wedding which lasts at most a few days.”
Huraira Inuwa, a 40-year-old nurse, opines that: “This has been something that has always been on my mind whenever I attend a wedding and see the kind of extravagant spending that has been done to organise the wedding. Seriously, who are we trying to please? The guests will not spend even a day with the couple; neither will they share in their sorrows when things become sore. Only a few will be there for them. So why do we go ahead to spend huge sums of money on wedding celebrations? For me, they are not realistic. I just hope and pray people will understand the negative side of this trend. After all as far as I know, nobody has ever received an award for best wedding ceremony. So why do we spend more on wedding and less on marriages?”
For 39-year-old civil servant Aisha Saleh, it’s so true and funny that some people don’t know there is a big difference between wedding and marriage. Defining what each stands for, she says: “A marriage is a long term relationship between two individuals who end up as partners while a wedding, on the other hand, is the ceremony of getting married.” She then asks: “Why do people then spend all the time, energy and money on weddings? I am not saying people should not be happy that they are coming together as one but then, when you look at the way people are spending these days on weddings you will wonder if it is worth the trouble. I mean I have attended elaborate weddings most of which ended in divorce. Some of these elaborate weddings are just a farce. Marriage is what should be paramount on the minds of intending couples and not the show off of the wedding day. For me they are just misplaced priorities.”
Marriage counsellor, Pastor Mrs. Chika Emmanuel notes that: “Many marriages are in crisis today because of misplaced priority. Many misunderstand the concept of marriage to mean the wedding. The wedding is never the same thing as the marriage. Marriage is where the real things begin. If you expect what happened on your wedding day to continue then you are in for a rude shock.”
She adds that: “We have seen many weddings that painted the town red and were talked about for days on social media and print media and even the broadcast media ending up in nasty divorces.  I have seen situations where the loan taken to execute such elaborate weddings was the reason why the marriage did not work because they could not pay up and kept managing lives as all resources they had went into paying off the debt of the wedding.”
The counselor advises that: “Intending couples need to understand that weddings will always come and go but the marriage will remain. So it is best for all to focus on planning their marriages.”