Dialogue: No wedding presents, please, just aim the electronic arrow

By JOE BENNETT

Weddings persist. Many a doomster has prophesied their demise, but every one of them has got it wrong.

And badly wrong. These days whole shops and magazines are dedicated, out of a sheer delight in life, to weddings alone.

But like all living things weddings have evolved. Gone or going is the liturgy. All that ominous stuff about sickness, health, richer, poorer and death us do part is heading for the door marked oblivion. It's sonorous all right, but quite frankly it lacks relevance.

In its place has come poetry, particularly Shakespeare's sonnets. Just by being by Shakey they add a whiff of class, with the additional advantage of no one understanding a word of them.

But top of the poetry pops for weddings, and top by a matter of miles, is Kahlil Gibran. If the poor old Lebanese songster hadn't keeled over in 1931, right now he'd be raking in the royalties.

Mr Gibran was big on natural things. He held the view that we are all leaves in God's forest, that love is a moving sea between the shores of our souls, and plenty more along the same lines. He had little to say about rats or bacteria, but then you can't have everything.

He wrote some especially lovely stuff on procreation. Husband and wife, he wrote, are bows from whom children will be sent forth as living arrows. At a truly modern wedding, of course, plenty of living arrows have already been sent forth and are making a lot of noise.

Mr Gibran said that the souls of these living arrows dwell in the house of tomorrow. I'm unqualified to comment on souls or their whereabouts but I do know that the living arrows' bodies are often to be found in the marquee trying to get into the booze.

With the liturgy out of fashion the wedding has burst from the gloomy confines of the church. A truly modern splicing takes place by a river or on a beach - perhaps to facilitate the movement of love between souls.

As vicars have waned so celebrants have waxed, proliferating like an algal bloom. Celebrants smile a lot and wear hats like satellite dishes. When I am invited to an al fresco wedding reffed by a celebrant I like to stand upwind of things. That way the Kahlil Gibran stuff, all of which I know by heart, drifts away to enchant other ears than mine and I can watch the whole performance in dumb show.

I might miss a few of the celebrant's very good jokes, but I do enjoy seeing the womenfolk all simultaneously smiling, snuffling and curling arms over their heads to hold on to their hats. They look like a congregation of emotional gibbons.

But the greatest advance in the modern wedding has been in gifts. Gone are the days of random gift-giving. Gone are the days when the bride woke on the first morning of married life to six identical toasters. Gone is the idea that a gift is the product of a spontaneous surge of goodwill. Gone is the notion that the gift says something of the giver. And about time.

A gift is no more nor less than an entrance fee to the shindig. As such it should be practical and wanted. Hence those lists compiled by the bride, the bride's mother and perhaps the groom, who have spent a happy morning in a department store earmarking the goods that they would like to see gracing their little place in God's forest.

A cheapish vase that Auntie Jean might be persuaded to stretch to. A simply lovely dehumidifier that the merchant banker buddy of the groom should be steered towards after a well-lubricated lunch. That is gift-giving as it should be - sensible, utilitarian, stripped of yesterday's romantic flummery.

But even that is now old hat. At a recent wedding, guests were strictly told that presents were not required. We are embarking on a voyage, said the invite, more or less. Come to the party and crack a festive bottle on our bow.

The future is a dark ocean. Perhaps we'll find a mooring in the isles of happiness. Perhaps we'll founder on the iceberg of incompatibility. But for now we can do nothing more than launch our ship and we would like to do so with you, requiring nothing of you but your good wishes.

Nevertheless, if some archaic superstition urges you to send us on our way in some more concrete form, and you would like to chuck a few provisions in our holds to sustain us on our journey across the oceans of love, please do so in cash.

And nothing sordid, thank you, such as cheques or crumpled dirty notes. Please make an electronic funds transfer. Our account number is printed below.

Now there's modern.