Advice for the newly weds

We recently celebrated the wedding of our son and I was asked to speak as the father of the groom and to advise my son on his marriage. David, one of my dearest friends and favourite writer, came up to me after the speech and insisted that I put this down in my next blog. So here it is, in slightly abbreviated form..

"It is said that of all the things which wisdom provides to make life entirely happy, the greatest is friendship. So it is with great pleasure that we welcome all of you- our dearest friends- to this happy occasion…

I have been asked to distill my years of wisdom and provide some advise to my newly wedded son:

Though of course it has been said that a man listens to his father only when he has a son who does-not. It was Mark Twain who put it best when he said, “ When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

And it is a form of poetic justice that by the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.

But here are some words of wisdom anyway!

It’s been said that said that a man is not complete until he is married --and then he’s well and truly finished.

For a happy marriage, and based on my lifetime of experience, it is always a good strategy to wake up every morning and apologize to your wife. You may not know why but, hey, during the day you will commit some boo boo or the other and you might as well get the apologies out of the way early in the day.

For the fact is that your wife will always be right, everything will always be your fault and you will never win an argument.

Just remember that a man who gives in when he is wrong is a wise man. But a man who gives in when he is right..he is married!

In a more serious vein, always be respectful of each other, particularly in public, and always fight for each other and not against each other!

A friend of mine thinks everyone should get married because no one deserves to be happy their entire life.

But I hope that you two will prove him wrong and that fifty, sixty, seventy years from now, you will be just as happy and as much in love with each other as you are today."