How To Be Married in 100 Days!

You are probably scratching your head over the above subject matter. How can someone be married in 100 days? That is three months and a few days… Yes! You can be married in 100 days after you meet and come to terms with who that person is. Let me disabuse your mind from the onset that I am not advocating that if you have nobody as a proposed partner today, once you read this blog post, you will find one and marry him or her in 100 days. Not so at all. It is about you and your partner with whom you have agreed to start a family making up your mind to be married 100 days after a proposal has been made and accepted.

Why People Spend So Much Time In Relationships & Courtship

The typical couple in Africa, especially in my country Nigeria, spends between 6 months to 1 year in a relationship after they have agreed to be married before they do. Some others are in it for two to three years. I know a few couples who dated and were in a relationship for upwards of 8 years. There are so many reasons why some people spend a long time in relationships before being married. Some of the reasons are tenable and understandable, while others are simply no-brainers as they do not line up to normal reasoning at all.

Here are a few reasons why relationships takes a long time to crystallize into marriages:

a) The two persons have agreed they want to marry but they do not have the mental and emotional capacity to go the whole hog yet. For some, it is the absence of finance in view of the high demands placed on suitors as preconditions for the marriage ceremony being held especially as it relates to native law and custom. A couple may keep pushing the dates of their marriage forward for a long time on account of these reasons.

b) Some people, before proposing to a lady or a lady accepting a guy’s proposal, do not count the cost of being married to that person before opening their mouths. If you understand that once you commit, you should not recant, you will not be flippant with your words. I dreaded using the words, “I love you” for a long time because I understand what it means and how weighty it is. If you tell someone you love him or her and few months down the line, you begin to say, “I hate you“, then you didn’t understand what you were saying in the first instance. Therefore, most folks abide long in the relationship realms just to test and confirm that their conviction is rock solid before they proceed to the next level. Some other folks never cross this stage as they eventually get to a breaking point and part ways.

c) There is a tendency for people around you to think that having met someone for just two to three months, you shouldn’t be in a rush to marry them because you have not finished knowing him or her. Let me be very frank with you at this point: You can never finish knowing anyone; only God has that prerogative. However there is a point of sincerity two persons can come to and they can proceed to marry knowing that the character traits of that individual does not send the wrong signal of that person being fake.

We can go on with several reasons why we believe a relationship should take a longer time before it is consummated in marriage. I have also held that belief for years until a recent experience made me swallow my pride and to admit that if you know your partner to some extent (and that can happen in 60 days and a little more), then you can marry that person within 100 days of your being in agreement.

Here are a few tips on how you can achieve that:

Once you and your partner have come to terms with the fact that you two are meant for each other and there is no more doubt about one another, why wait for another year or two? Except of course you two are living apart in different cities and you are still trying to figure out why you cannot possibly start a family in that condition. Upon agreement, you must both determine what your big deals are and have serious talking points about them. You can do this over a period of one year; picking one issue per day and discussing them. Most people do not have the habit of exhaustively discussing core issues and they leave it to chance until the “elephant in the room” becomes too big to handle.
Once agreed on core issues such as faith, children, money and sex, then you must proceed to get your parents or relatives involved. Be careful not to talk to friends and people who do not have a stake in your life. They do not have so much responsibilities in your life and surrendering your critical decision making process to conjecture, suggestions and their opinions will open you up to a lot of painful experiences. You should be communicating your DECISIONS to people who are without much stakes in your life instead.
Have a small budget for your wedding ceremonies. In Africa, we have so many ceremonies for our marriages. We can get our families to help us tone down the hype and insist on small “crowds” which will make you avoid so many expenditures. If you have just 15 to 20 people to entertain at the traditional marriage besides the bride price, the budget would be small. Don’t talk to me about “white weddings”. You can have a pastor or a priest pray for to join you at the traditional ceremony and you are married. Do you want to make a small show? Invite your friends to a small reception within town a day after or some weeks later to declare to them that you two are married.

It is very easy to marry in 100 days after knowing who the person is if we take heed to the above suggestions and submissions. I know this will elicit a lot of questions and discussions; let us have your say!