Pre-Intermediate Reading Exercise

Considering their wedding cost over $20,000 and took a year and a half to organize, you would be surprised to hear that Richard and Victoria Hammond now intend to forget it. Well, almost.

"It was a wonderful wedding, an unbelievable day," says Victoria. "But we have so much we want to do together now, we are both looking to the future." Her husband, banker and amateur race driver Richard, agrees. "Both our minds are now fixed firmly on the future. I'll never forget our wedding ceremony or the reception we had at a cliff-side hotel afterwards, but there's so much we want, so many hopes. Our marriage is so much more important than the wedding."

"At the moment, we are still living with my parents," explains Victoria, "so our first wish is to find our own place. We intend to start looking for a new house with all the modern conveniences in the suburbs in the new year." Both Victoria and husband Richard have a lot of siblings. Do they intend to add to the extended Hammond family? "We plan on having two or three children ourselves," Richard tells me. "Victoria is just wonderful with children and I can get 3 years paternity leave from my work, which is just perfect."

The young couple has just returned from a two-week honeymoon spent in an authentic Scottish castle. Both the newly-weds are big travel lovers and Richard hopes this will continue. "I would like to go travelling as much as possible together. Travelling with someone else is such a sharing experience. I think it's sad to experience all the wonderful places in the world and have no-one else there." Victoria also has another great travel ambition that she might have to do alone. "I have always been fascinated by safari and my real wish is to go on safari. Richard has no interest in wildlife though."

And what about the marriage itself? In a world with such a high divorce rate, how do Richard and Victoria hope to avoid all the problems that beset so many other couples? Richard explains thoughtfully that "our ambition is to always talk to each other. If you stop communicating, what chance do you have?" His wife goes along with that completely. "I hope that we can speak about things, but also not expect everything to be easy. I think many people expect the wedding to be the end of getting to know each other. I think it's the start."