Wedding receptions make me wonder about the point of marriage

Back from holiday in Italy, I look out of my kitchen window in Northamptonshire to find the country view blocked by an enormous marquee with red pennants flying from the top. People are bustling about, carrying boxes of cutlery, glasses and china. I suddenly remember that there is to be a wedding reception here tomorrow. I let people hold such receptions to help pay for the maintenance of two crumbling Inigo Jones pavilions, the surviving appendages of a 17th-century country house that was destroyed by fire in the 1880s. I charge for these events, but this is but a tiny proportion of the cost of the receptions for the couples concerned. They typically have sit-down suppers for over 100 people, and many more guests afterwards to dance till midnight to deafening rock music. I can easily believe the estimates in the press that the average cost of a wedding in Britain is now somewhere over £20,000.