We'll refer to it as the Elizabethan factor.  One of America’s most striking Hollywood icons, a child actress with God given beauty and talent, born in England to American parents, returning to the States to lend her exquisite looks and alluring charm to the big screen.  She could have been considered a child bride as well, marrying at the tender age of eighteen to a socialite heir six years her senior, the first of eight of Elizabeth Taylor’s marriages. Her roster of marital mates spanned forty six years with a total of twenty one nuptials between them respectively.  Statistics state one out of every seven weddings is the third trip down the aisle, roughly 15 percent, as in the case above, with each averaging three marriages, give or take -- you can do the math. .  The word “wedding” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word, “wedd” meaning to wager or gamble, referring to the price that a man paid for his would be bride – often nothing more than a bargaining chip used in bartering for property, stature, distinction or political gain. The earliest marriage certificate was found some 2,500 years ago in Egypt indicating just that, a documented contract for a fourteen year old bride in exchange for six cows, undoubtedly very little to do with the emotion of love. 

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Happily ever after has been streamlined into our homes through just about every media outlet including film, television, literature and the music we listen to.  Love and Marriage, the 1955 chart hit crooned by Frank Sinatra, expressed that it was an institute you couldn’t disparage.  The tune was introduced to a much younger generation as the theme song for Married with Children, the 80's primetime sitcom played out on Sunday nights offering its take of comical relief on the main characters rather disparaging union. "This I tell ya, brother, you can't have one without the other". Ol’ Blue Eyes could have argued the fact at least four times...... Even if it wasn’t happily ever after for the Chairman of the Board, his first marriage did make it to the decade mark – see a theory beginning to emerge?

 

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