Wedding gift idea uk

So much for National Marriage Week. There we were with the national marriage all ready to roll. Photographers' stepladders padlocked to the railings; [pounds]1,500-worth of Casablancan lilies delivered at dawn; poulets cooked, cake prepared, bridegroom's mum on the shuttle down from Manchester.

And then Liam and Patsy called it off, in favour of a day spent eating chicken tikka massala in bed. Of course it wouldn't have lasted. Marriage demands respect for one's partner's comfort and well-being. Toast crumbs in bed is one thing. Chicken tikka massala is quite another.

Or perhaps they had got up by then. I don't recall. Either way, I must not dwell for too long on Miss Kensit, whose volatile nature does not knit easily with New Statesman publishing schedules.

By the time you read this she may already have found a wedding venue offering the privacy and dignity she and Liam require. Maybe a ceremony before kick-off at the England-Italy game. Alternatively her past marital history suggests she could have dumped him altogether, in favour of a king prawn vindaloo with Damon out of Blur.

Besides, the really iconic couple for National Marriage Week is Teresa and Rex from New Mexico, who chose to enshrine their marital vows in a 62-page love pact known as court document 95-065775. Under its provisions she is legally bound to have sex with her husband between three and five times a week, to refrain from smoking, to drink only in moderation and to keep the car's petrol tank at least a quarter full.

"Marriage can be successful with just love, but it's much easier with negotiation and planning," says Teresa. Quite. I think this is what Demos had in mind when launching its ingenious proposal to revamp a dying institution.

First-time marriage in Britain is at its lowest since 1889. Our divorce rate went up sixfold between 1961 and 1991. Two in five marriages fail; most in the first ten years. Children suffer, so do their divorced parents, and the whole business costs [pounds]4 billion a year.

What are we to do? One suggestion is a ten-year renewable contract, rather than altar-to-grave marriage vows. (Rex and Teresa, close your ears lest the lawyers' renegotiation fees reach Maxwell trial dimensions.)

Demos's wider idea is more appealing. For couples to write their own vows and design their own rituals would put marriage into a modern cultural framework.

But whatever the format of the ceremony, relationships will not prove more durable unless public policy better supports private commitment. Similarly the Lord Chancellor's signalling of marriage-preparation classes at school offers little more than an advertising relaunch for a discredited product.

Good marriages seem desirable because they are deemed the breeding ground of a good society and a potent symbol of national well-being. That may be true. Conversely, in a flawed society in which families must cope with either overwork or unemployment and a social security system routed towards the benefit trap, marriage is a prime casualty.

Hence the resuscitation programme, which, in playing up the merits of the good marriage, rather forgets the virtues of the good divorce. When Frieda Weekley parted from her husband in 1912 to marry D H Lawrence, hers was one of only 587 divorces that year; all granted as a gift by the injured spouse to the guilty.

In bewailing this year's figure of 165,000, it is also worth remembering that the "No permission, no divorce" rule - a brutal piece of law that imprisoned the unwilling in disastrous marriages - endured until 1969.

Given that inertia, it is hardly surprising that it took until last year for Lord Mackay's no-fault proposals to crawl on to the statute book. The resistance he met reflected the family fundamentalists' vision of marriage as a sort of sanctified gin-trap, baited by unbreakable vows.

But in a secular age a joint mortgage remains a more powerful bond than the marriage pledges the church would like us to renew this week. Even among long-married couples, 15 per cent cite their church-decreed promises as a reason for staying together. The main factor above sex, love or children - is that "they complement each other". In other words, couples will survive if they are able, and society allows them, to adapt.

No great surprise there. Nothing that we couldn't figure out without the help of National Marriage Week; in which - amid the clash of the family fundamentalists and the wedding revisionists - the most helpful practical hint was provided by Patsy and Liam.

If unable to decide between a lifelong commitment and an Indian takeaway, much safer to go for the curry.