Love is...

Happy Valentines Day! I hope the postman brought you a card this morning - or was it said with flowers? Better still with a long, lingering kiss.

Apparently the world's longest kiss started on Valentine's Day in 2004. It lasted 31 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds and the female partner needed oxygen treatment afterwards. Not recommended. The average person spends 2 weeks of their life kissing and it burns up 26 calories a minute - that's half a million calories. What ARE you waiting for?

If you're an eco-warrior or budget conscious type of couple then you might have pledged your everlasting love in an e-card. In which case you might also like to treat yourselves to Andrew Body's new book called Making the Most of Weddings: A Practical Guide for Churches that Church House publishing has just released, and which caused so much media interest yesterday.

It's got some great tips for weddings that don't 'cost the earth', which is a subject close to my heart too. I think it's really sad when people delay getting married (or even never get around to it) simply because they feel that they can't afford it. As Elle at Fairydust weddings posted this week - weddings don't have to cost millions.

The newspapers carried a story yesterday about Jasin Boland, a Hollywood photographer who paid half a million for a house and then hired 5 workmen and 2 cherry-pickers to gift-wrap it as a surprise for his fiancee. He was quoted as saying "The secret of romance isn't big gestures. The secret is being in love."

I agree entirely, but staying in love is a much harder challenge and the reason why, sadly, so many marriages flounder. So I want to offer some advice of a Vicarly kind.

If you're getting married in church, listen hard to the vows and declarations you'll be asked to make. Notice that the responses are not "I do" but "I will". We're not asking if you do love each other. We're assuming that you wouldn't be making this commitment if you didn't.

We're asking "Will you?" Will you love each other when the bills are mounting up and the ceiling's falling down, when she's pre-menstrual or he's got man-flu, when you lose your jobs or your friends and when the whole world (and even your bank manager) seems to be against you? Will you stand together and support one another for as long as you live and breathe? Will You?

That's a very different question. It doesn't rely on your feelings at any given moment it depends on an act of will and determination.

Of course it's important to be in love - and stay in love. That takes effort too. You can usually keep a person physically alive with the Kiss of Life. A marriage is kept alive in the same way. By maintaining close, loving, intimate contact. By noticing and appreciating each other, and helping each other to achieve your best potential in every sphere of life. By thinking 'we' instead of 'me'. And the odd romantic gesture doesn't go amiss either.

Jasin Boland said "If you're trying to make a romantic gift, you just need a big bow." Which is why when my beloved walks in tonight he'll be greeted by our four big boisterous dogs wearing cheesy grins and big red ribbons. Well it's worth a try.

Hopefully he'll be bringing home something much more materialistic - preferably with a high chocolate content. Here's to romance.