According to the latest U.S. statistics, June is STILL the most popular month for weddings.
It all started with the Romans, who, over two thousand years ago, celebrated on June 1 a festival in honour of Juno, the wife of Jupiter and the goddess of marriage and childbirth. During the Middle Ages, June was the month that folks ventured outdoors after a long winter and took a communal bath: a clean start to the marriage, perhaps?
Mortality rates being what they were back then, children conceived in June or shortly thereafter would be born the next spring, giving them a better chance of survival after a long, often lean winter.
And since the June wedding tradition has survived and thrived till this day, June is also the top month for wedding anniversaries! Now all those babies are grown up and wanting to pay tribute to their parents!
Looking for some appropriate words to toast a celebrating couple? Choose from among those that best suit your personal style:
A little humour?
- In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the woman listens. In the second year of marriage, the woman speaks and the man listens. In the third year of marriage, they both speak and the neighbors listen.
- There are two occasions when a man doesn’t understand a woman – before marriage and after it.
- A husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep his mouth shut and his wallet open. –Groucho Marx
- A good marriage is like a casserole; only those responsible for it really know what goes into it. –Oscar Wilde
- Scientists have discovered that the longer people stay married, the more they begin to look alike. After twenty-five years, you better start putting name tags in your underwear!
- Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.–Henny Youngman
- A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him. — Brendan Francis
- Love is blind — marriage is the eye-opener. — Pauline Thomason
A little irony?
- Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
- More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.—Doug Larson
- The middle years of marriage are the most crucial. In the early years, spouses want each other and in late years, they need each other.—Rebecca Tilly
- Married couples who love each other say a thousand things without talking.
—Chinese proverb - A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year.—Paul Sweeney
- Happy marriages begin when we marry the one we love, and they blossom when we love the one we married. —Sam Levenson
- Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.– George Bernard Shaw
- Men always want to be a woman’s first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: what they like is to be a man’s last romance. — Oscar Wilde
A little philosophy?
- Spouse: someone who’ll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn’t have had if you’d stayed single.
- Love doesn’t make the world go ‘round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile. — Franklin P. Jones
- Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.—Simone Signoret
- We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.– Somerset Maugham
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched; they must be felt. —Helen Keller - Love builds bridges where there are none.– R. H. Delaney
- One man by himself is nothing. Two people who belong together make a world. —Hans Margolius
- The heart of marriage is memories; and if the two of you happen to have the same ones and can savor your reruns, then your marriage is a gift from the gods.—Bill Cosby
- Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.—Rose Franken
- A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. — Mignon McLaughlin
- The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds — they mature slowly. – Peter De Vries
- Married couples resemble a pair of scissors, often moving in opposite directions, yet punishing anyone who gets in between them. — Sydney Smith
- Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.