Excerpt from a wedding speech

Written for the sister of the bride (reproduced with permission)

When I think of marriage my first thought is always Jane Austen.  I love the famous quotation ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune is in want of a wife.’ I love it because it plays with all the preconceptions we have about marriage. 

What we think about women who marry for money, what we think about men who marry to get a housekeeper. 

How I love the bit when Darcy says to Elizabeth, ‘You must allow me to tell you, how ardently I love and admire you.’ And Elizabeth tells him to get stuffed – well of course, not quite in those words.