Divorce is a messy business. If both parties are truly interested in reconciling their differences, most times a divorce can be avoided. If people are willing to compromise, they can often find solutions to problems they never thought were possible.

If your marriage is going through one of those phases that all marriages eventually go through, you will find yourself in a position where a simply apology will go a very long way in helping to resolve the issue. If enough of these smaller issues are left unrecognized, a divorce will most likely be in your future.

If you have done something you need to apologize for, use the four R’s to help develop an apology that will go a very long way. Hopefully, this strategy can help avoid a divorce or in the worst-case scenario, make a divorce a little more amicable. The four R’s for a successful apology are: recognition, regret, responsibility and remedy.

RECOGNITION

You must first recognize where you have gone wrong and what you need to apologize for. If you don’t recognize the fact it may not be OK to play golf with the boys every Saturday and Sunday morning, then you maybe a single golfer before you know it. If however, you recognize playing golf every weekend with the boys may not be in the best interest of your marriage, you may want to recognize this fact and admit it to your spouse.

REGRET

After you recognize the error of your ways and admit you were wrong to play golf all weekend long, you would be well served to express regret to your spouse because of your actions. If your spouse sees sincere regret on your part, they are more likely to accept your apology as being genuine and heart felt.

RESPONSIBILITY

If you don’t want to become a single golfer, when you apologize to your spouse, you should accept full responsibility for your actions. It is useless to blame the guys for dragging you out to the course every weekend morning. It serves no purpose to blame a stressful job and the fact you require some down time with the guys in order to help you cope. You must fess up and admit the problem was caused by you and only you can help change the outcomes.

REMEDY

Once you recognize that playing golf every weekend is not acceptable and you have demonstrated sincere regret and responsible for your actions, it is time to develop a remedy to help solve the problem.

You must communicate to your spouse how you intend to remedy or change the problem so that the behavior is not repeated in the future. You must compromise with your spouse so that both of you can agree upon an acceptable time to play golf with the boys.

Gary Kelly is co-creator of the online dating website for golfers, http://www.DateAGolfer.com and http://www.PuttingForPar.com, a golf website specializing in personalized ball markers.

As a girl, I always dreamed of a church wedding in the rolling hills of the Kentish countryside somewhere. When my big day came, I never dreamed that I would be one of those modern brides who would jet off for sunny climes and marry with the sand between my toes. It just goes to show how wrong a girl can be!

Let me tell you what lead to us tying the knot overseas.

You only have to mention the word ‘wedding’ to any UK business and the quote is doubled; I think they must be in on it along with plumbers! Photographers, venues and caterers know that brides don’t want to make cut backs in any of these areas and will pay over the odds for their services. This doesn’t make sense to me at all. It’s the same with travel companies - flights increase in price during school holidays when demand is high. Surely simple supply and demand economics tell us that prices should be lowered at these times because the business is guaranteed?

Apparently not! With wedding service providers, you need to book them years in advance! I mean, that’s ridiculous. And why do people assume that because you want to tie the knot, you’re suddenly rich?!

After being told “there’s a 3 year waiting list” at every feasible wedding location in the area, we decided to get the holiday brochures out and look at honeymoon destinations to cheer ourselves up. It was here that the idea of combining honeymoon with wedding was suggested. We toyed with it for a while and gradually began to come round to the idea. Of course, it was my fiance who was most keen to do it and initially I wasn’t so sure. I was worried that it wouldn’t be special or magical enough for me. My only stipulations were that immediate family would have to be there and the service would be on terra firma so that my Jimmy Choo heels wouldn’t sink in the sand!

In a flash of madness, we found somewhere that we agreed on and just booked it! Everything from there on in, was so easy. We were assigned a wedding co-ordinator who explained that plans for the actual wedding and ceremony didn’t need to be settled until 6 weeks before the flight! What? Six weeks? Not six months or six years?

Of course, my dress needed to be travel-friendly. This didn’t stop me though - I still wore a meringue! The travel company took great care of it and even though our destination was hot, any creases dropped out within 10 minutes of hanging it up.

Upon our arrival we met with the wedding co-ordinator. Over a glass of champagne and overlooking a sun-kissed sea, we discussed venue, type of vows, music in the service, bridal party make-up and hair, did we want anything dry-cleaned, what bouquet would I like, whether we’d like a fruit or sponge wedding cake, did I have any favours for place settings, would we like the service put on a DVD as well as 120 photographs taken and so on. All the things that other brides spend 18 months organizing, we had done it in a hour with a bottle of champagne!

Our wedding day was the most beautiful day of our lives. Everyone watched us walk past them on the beach and they all cheered and waved. Sometimes couples are married in the UK like battery hens but we were treated like royalty and for a fraction of the price of a UK wedding!

I can’t recommend it enough and I still got my fairytale wedding, in my fairytale dress and in a beautiful setting. I would do it exactly the same all over again.

(c) World of Wedding Favours

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When it came to hospitality, to the ancient Greeks it was the first commandment of life. Anyone under your roof, beggar or fool, became as a member of your family to be treated with generosity and respect.

Perhaps the greatest example of how highly hospitality was regarded in ancient times, can be seen by the actions of Hercules - that man of inordinate strength whose labours are legendary.

One day, several friends dropped in unexpectedly on Hercules. Greeting them immediately with a smile, Hercules plied them with wine, and exhorted them to check out the larder for anything that might take their fancy. Several hours later, the guests mellow with drink, noticed the absence of Hercules’ wife. When asked to explain the reason why she hadn’t come to greet them, Hercules continued to smile, offer them more food, and did his best to divert them from the subject of his wife.

Like all people who have discovered our Achilles’ heel, the guests fastened on to the subject of Hercules’ wife like bloodhounds. They refused to let go. Abashed at their insistence, at length Hercules led them to the room where his wife lay in state. Literally. She had died that day, and rather than force grief on his friends, Hercules had chosen to hide his own. He really was a softie!

The Scots, despite their reputation for valuing the dollar more than a little, are the most hospitable people in the world. Planning a wedding holds no terror for them. When the matter of what drinks to serve comes up, they don’t throw up their hands in horror at the thought of an open bar. Not for them the house red or the house white. To offer anything but quality alcohol is beyond their ken.

Often at weddings you see tentative forays into old customs. One of these is the bride and groom toasting each other by drinking from the same cup, while the guests look on.

Not so at a wedding planned by a Scotsman.

At such a wedding, as the bride and groom toast each other from their shallow cup, another, deeper cup, filled not with some watered down Semillon or briny Moselle, but containing the finest Scotch whisky, is simultaneously passed from the hands of one guest to another to symbolically share in the happiness and good fortune of the bride and groom in finding each other.

It really is no wonder that the high jinx of New Year’s celebration is associated with Scotland’s old favourite, ‘Auld Lang Syne’ They know how to celebrate.

Vlady Peters is an Australian Civil Marriage Celebrant authorised to perform marriages in Australia. She also perform general ceremonies such as Baby Naming, Renewal of Vows and Commitment Ceremonies. To learn more about her as a celebrant and an author visit Vlady at http://www.weddings-celebrant.com