God's Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage

God's Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage is designed to help today's engaged couples understand and embrace a Catholic vision of married love. It offers a more complete understanding of God's glorious plan for marriage and human sexuality based on Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body.
This program is intended to enhance a key component of marriage preparation: catechesis in the theology of marriage and the gift of human sexuality. This state of the art approach to marriage preparation is also designed to facilitate the couple's insight and self-awareness, and help develop important relational skills.
The God's Plan program provides a full catechesis of the Church's teaching, in an uplifting manner that resonates within the human heart. Engaged couples will learn how their love mirrors Christ's love for the Church, and how entering into the life-giving love of the Trinity through their marriage will bring them the happiness and fulfillment they desire. The goal is for couples to comprehend the "whys" behind the "whats" of Catholic teaching.

Arranged Marriages and Dowry

We are all familiar with the story : boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy and girl gets married. For the majority of the western world, this is our ideal of a great beginning to a perfect marriage. It is important to realize that while India is very modernized in some aspects (i.e.. they lead the world in student's math and science scores and produce the largest amount of engineers in the world) they still keep to the tradition of arranged marriages. Marriages formed out of love AKA "love marriages" do happen in India but it is not the norm. It is an accepted fact that a person's family will play a role in picking the marriage partner.
While to many people raised in the west, this might sound odd. It is important to remember that in Indian society an arranged marriage is seen as an act of love. Since marriage is one of the most important decisions a person will ever make and because divorce is not accepted among most Indians, it is imperative that the marriage choice is carefully thought out and planned. How can a young person make such an important decision on his/her own? Instead, the family (usually the parents) look for certain traits in a marriage partner. Some desirable traits looked for in both male and female are: matching levels of education, matching cultures, close parental cities, matching religions, and matching vegetarians/non-vegetarians just to name a few.
Potential bride-grooms come under close scrutiny for several areas of the matching process. Do they have enough means to support the bride? Do they appear to be men who will make good husbands and fathers? Often, the bride will live with her in-laws after marriage in what is called a joint family. Because of this, the groom's family is also brought under close scrutiny. Do the women of the household seem well cared for? Do they have a big enough house for another person and grandchildren? Does the family have a good reputation?
Potential brides also come under scrutiny by the boy's parents. Since it is a commonly held belief that brides are the embodiment of that family's honor and pride, the girl must be from good family and have good manners. She should be respectable and have no taint on her name. Does she have the makings of a good wife and mother? Does she want to work after marriage or stay at home? There are so many factors to weigh, that I can not list them all.
Often, this turns into an interview process where photos are provided of the boy/girl in question along with bio-data about his/her life and family. If that meets with approval, arrangements will be made for the parents to meet the boy/girl and their family. Traditionally, however, the bride and groom would not even see each other until the day of their wedding. Today, while most marriages are still arranged, times are changing. There is usually a small courtship period where the bride and groom can meet and talk under the careful watch of a guardian. Also, if either one of the two do not want the marriage, it is likely to be cancelled. Very few family's today "force" marriages upon their children.

Seven Signs He's Marriage Material

Thinking about settling down sometime soon? Hoping a husband and kids are just around the
corner? If this is the case, you may need to evaluate the man you're dating to see whether he's the right one to build that life with. Some guys are just not ready to even consider the transition into married life. If you are anxious and ready to begin the next phase of your life, make sure your relationship has the potential to lead to marriage, so that you are not wasting your time. Here are seven signs that will show you that your boyfriend is "marriage material":

1. He keeps a tidy home.

If you go over to your boyfriend's apartment and there are clothes everywhere, dirty dishes piled as high as the ceiling, and a giant health code violation for a bathroom, he might not be ready for the demands of keeping up a home. He may just need a little motivation to clean up, but if it's like pulling teeth to get him to run a vacuum, he may not be marriage material quite yet.

2. He is financially responsible.

Starting a life together takes a lot of money, from paying for a wedding to buying a house, and you need to know he'll be able to budget for all the upcoming expenses. A man who is marriage material should have savings and a plan for paying off his debt, avoid excessive frivolous spending, and have a solid idea of where his money is going each month.

3. He has mentioned his future children.

I'll never forget when I was just getting to know my husband and he made the comment, "My kids will never..." I don't even know what the end of the sentence was, but what mattered to me was that he saw kids in his future. If your boyfriend has never even mentioned future children, but you want to have kids, he might not be the right man for you to marry.

4. He has made sacrifices for you.

Marriage is all about selfless sacrifice. A great sign that your man is marriage material is that he has, at some point, chosen you over something else. Whether that means he went to your drama production instead of his poker night, or he got up on Sunday morning to go to church with you when he was battling a hangover, he needs to show that he is willing to compromise and give of himself in your marriage.

5. He is not too attached to the "bachelor lifestyle."

If you feel like your boyfriend spends an inordinate time at the bar with friends, littering the floor of his living room with beer cans, and engrossed in video games, he might not be ready to give up his bachelor lifestyle. On the other hand, if he doesn't have a problem giving up a Saturday night to help you fix your garbage disposal, he might be marriage material.

6. He treats his mom well.

Growing up, my mom always told me to watch how my boyfriend treated his mother and that would show how he would treat his wife. If your husband is patient with, considerate of, and kind to his mom (assuming she is a caring mother who is still in his life), he will probably be the same with you.

7. You can trust him to do what he says he'll do.

You've got to be able to count on your man to do the things he agrees to—especially when you throw things like paying bills and caring for children into the mix. If he seems to consistently "forget" to do the things you ask, he might not be marriage material.

Even if your boyfriend doesn't meet all of these criteria, you need to know that your he at least believes he will get married someday, that he's on track to leaving bachelorhood behind, and that he can see his future wife being you. Evaluating him based on these seven signs is a good place to start, but initiating an open, honest, and ongoing conversation about your future would be an even better way to find out whether he's "marriage material" for you.

marriage quotes

What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne


Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him. ~H.L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques, 1916


The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds - they mature slowly. ~Peter De Vries


I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life. ~Rita Rudner


Marriage, n. A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911


Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open. ~George Bernard Shaw


Newlyweds become oldyweds, and oldyweds are the reasons that families work. ~Author Unknown


Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. ~Simone Signoret


Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate. ~Barnett R. Brickner


A long marriage is two people trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time. ~Anne Taylor Fleming


Woke up in bed with a gorgeous woman, who I'm going to have lunch and the rest of my life with. ~Jason Barmer, pedestriansaint.com


More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse. ~Doug Larson


One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again. ~Judith Viorst


Never get married in the morning, because you never know who you'll meet that night. ~Paul Hornung


Divorce: The past tense of marriage. ~Author Unknown


Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then. ~Katherine Hepburn


A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage. ~Robert Anderson, Solitaire & Double Solitaire


There is no such cozy combination as man and wife. ~Menander


It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being. ~Benjamin Disraeli


The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through eternity. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight. ~Phyllis Diller, Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints, 1966


In the opinion of the world, marriage ends all, as it does in a comedy. The truth is precisely the opposite: it begins all. ~Anne Sophie Swetchine


In a time when nothing is more certain than change, the commitment of two people to one another has become difficult and rare. Yet, by its scarcity, the beauty and value of this exchange have only been enhanced. ~Robert Sexton


An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit. ~Pliny the Younger, Letters


If you made a list of the reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a hell of a lot of overlapping. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing. ~W. Somerset Maugham


If two stand shoulder to shoulder against the gods,
Happy together, the gods themselves are helpless
Against them while they stand so.
~Maxwell Anderson


After the chills and fever of love, how nice is the 98.6º of marriage! ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for granted relationship. ~Iris Murdoch


English Law prohibits a man from marrying his mother-in-law. This is our idea of useless legislation. ~Author Unknown


A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year. ~Paul Sweeney


Matrimony is a process by which a grocer acquired an account the florist had. ~Francis Rodman


Marriage is a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose. ~Beverley Nichols


Valentine's Day is when a lot of married men are reminded what a poor shot Cupid really is. ~Author Unknown


Love is a flower which turns into fruit at marriage. ~Finnish Proverb


A dress that zips up the back will bring a husband and wife together. ~James H. Boren


All marriages are happy. It's the living together afterward that causes all the trouble. ~Raymond Hull


One of the good things that come of a true marriage is, that there is one face on which changes come without your seeing them; or rather there is one face which you can still see the same, through all the shadows which years have gathered upon it. ~George MacDonald


As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent. ~Socrates


Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. ~Mark Twain


Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you. ~Jean Rostand, Le Mariage, 1927


Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences. ~Isadora Duncan


When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. ~G.B. Shaw, Getting Married, 1908


A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel: expensive, but worth it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


Our wedding was many years ago. The celebration continues to this day. ~Gene Perret


Here's to matrimony, the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented! ~Heinrich Heine


The reason for much matrimony is patrimony. ~Ogden Nash


I figure that the degree of difficulty in combining two lives ranks somewhere between rerouting a hurricane and finding a parking place in downtown Manhattan. ~Claire Cloninger, "When the Glass Slipper Doesn't Fit and the Silver Spoon is in Someone Else's Mouth"


A man's wife has more power over him than the state has. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals


Marriage: that I call the will of two to create the one who is more than those who created it. ~Friedrich Nietzsche


Three rings of marriage are the engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering. ~Author Unknown


Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves 'em still two fools. ~William Congreve


Marriage ceremony: an incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the law being dragged into the affairs of your family. ~O.C. Ogilvie

Wedding Clothes

Indian wedding

Indian weddings are very bright events, filled with ritual and celebration, that continue for several days. They are generally not small affairs, with anywhere between 100 to 10,000 people attending. Oftentimes it is possible that many of the attendees are unknown to the bride and groom themselves. Though most Indian marriages are arranged, some couples in urban areas have what are known as "love marriages", where the partners decide to marry each other without family involvement or assistance. The traditional Indian wedding is more about two families being brought together socially, with much less emphasis on the individuals involved.In general ,the ceremonies taking place in most of the traditional wedding are more or less common .The proposal for a boy in marriage by the girl's relations or vice versa is called bardekhi, The match-maker, who conducts the preliminary negotiations, is called agua.When a suitable boy has been found if, during the negotiations, a member of the bride's house visits the bride groom's, or vice versa.The betrothal consists in paying the tilak on the occasion of the formal proposal and acceptance of the proposal of marriage. The period of marriage ceremonies dates from the presenting tilak, and is called lagan .The marriage procession,barat is the first formal visit of the bridegroom to the bride's house.


Many of the wedding customs are common among Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and even Muslims. They are a combination of local, religious and family traditions.

Shaadi is a Sanskrit word for wedding. Asian weddings are a mainstay in the social calendar of the whole community. Many wedding traditions which have originated in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have carried over to second and third generation immigrant populations in western countries such as the UK and United States. Increasingly younger Asian couples are starting to incorporate Western features into their weddings such as speeches the first dance as well as the traditional wedding cake.

Asian weddings tend to be very lavish affairs and have been estimated at costing on average £30,000 in the UK[citation needed ] compared to an average of 17000.

source : - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_wedding