Attending a few more friends’ weddings gave Celia similar con?dence. “It made it less scary,” Celia adds. “I started to think that maybe I wasn’t too young to get married and maybe I will still have a life and my personality won’t be sapped out of me in a bid to find the perfect matching curtains and bed linen.”
In fact, she and Kevin are now happily throwing themselves into the line of fire. “I’ve started to ?nd going to weddings with Celia a romantic experience, especially the actual ceremony,” he says. The couple admits to “holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes, and giggling,” during the last celebration they attended. (They will marry this September, in Surrey.)
So are there any rules for a bird and bloke teetering on the make-or-break brink when yet another wedding invitation arrives in the mail? If commitment is what you’re after, hang out with the blissful husbands and wives at the reception, rather than the swinging singles.
“Surrounding yourselves with happily married couples is a great way to ‘market marriage’ to your mate,” says Daniel Rosenberg, co-author with Richard Kirshenbaum of
Closing the Deal: Two Married Guys Take You From Single Miss to Wedded Bliss .
If you’re looking for the escape hatch, Kirshenbaum has the strategy nailed: “Wait for a really important wedding and don’t invite him. He’ll get the hint.”
And if your goal is simply to have a good time? Just remember you’re there to celebrate someone else’s marriage, not to audition for your own.
Rebecca Wright was Tango’
s first editorial assistant. Now back home in Britain, she’s a feature writer with a news agency based in Bristol.