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Without a Hitch
Total number of weddings attended: 34
Invitations declined (due to conflict with another wedding): 1
Weddings to be attended between last week's and next Breakup Girl LIVE: 1
(with spiffy date! find out what
happens!)
Bridesmaid: 1
Featured reader: 1
"Good sport:" 2
Bouquets caught: 1
In another country: 3
Bride/groom heretofore considered much younger than self: 3
Dog in wedding party: 2
Dog as ring-bearer: 1
People dated having met at wedding: 1
People dated having met at wedding now planning own wedding: 1
"Viennese" dessert table with sparklers: 1 (last night, as a
matter of fact)
...But who's counting? Just me, apparently. According to reports out just
this month, due to cutbacks, the US government is no longer keeping detailed
statistics on marriage and divorce. Next year, the short form of the Census
will not ask marital status. The National Center for Health Statistics now
collects only yearly, state-by-state numbers of marriages and divorces --
without variables about age, number of children, number of previous marriages,
dimensions of ice sculptures, etc.
The good news for singletons: hey, no pressure.
The bad news: now we'll have only the New York Times wedding pages to tell
us whether we're "normal."
Also, I do find it odd that these figures were considered dispensable. Far
be it from BG to get all Family Values on you, but, as social scientist David
Blankenhorn has pointed out, we wouldn't make economic policy without knowing
the unemployment rate. "How can you make family policy based on ignorance
about marriage?" Yes, of course, "marriage" as an institution is
not the only prerequisite for "family." My point is: these are not
soft stats. These are the hard support beams for conclusions about how divorce
affects children. How marriage contributes to longevity (married men -- and
superheroes who provide supergrandchildren -- are actually likely to live
longer). That kind of thing. The stuff that reminds us that it's safe to say--
even without getting all Dan Quayle -- that the state of unions is directly
correlated to the state of the union.
So I guess we'll just continue to track our own over here on the Breakup
Girl Supercomputer. (Perhaps someday the second stat will be -- and remain --
"Own: 1." )
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