After seven years of marriage, three children, and yearly reaffirmation ceremonies, Heidi Klum and Seal announced yesterday that they are filing for divorce.

No very specific reason was given for the split, but the couple did release a joint statement, saying they had “grown apart” and that their separation is amicable.

Whatever their reasons, I do have to appreciate the fact that they are refusing to air their dirty linen in public. That, my friends, is how to do it the classy way.

The other split that made the news this week is Aretha Franklin and fiance Willie Wilkerson, who announced the end of their engagement just weeks after announcing its beginning. While the engagement is off, though, there is no word of whether or not they have ended their romance.

Franklin’s statement said that she and Wilkerson had decided they were moving “a little bit too fast” and said there were “a number of things that had not been thought through thoroughly.” The upshot? “There will be no wedding at this time.”

Whatever their issues, it is my fond hope they can be resolved to the satisfaction of all involved. But if they can’t, I do believe it’s better that things end in a broken engagement than a painful divorce down the road.

None of this is happy news, but the heart is a resilient muscle. May all four parties find happiness in the long run, if not at the moment.

Every once in a while in the wild and wooly world of weddings, a story comes along to which I can only respond with a hearty “and what was this person smoking, I wonder?”.

One of these stories is that of Todd Remis and his attempt to sue the living daylights out of his wedding photographer.

It seems that when Mr. Remis married his blushing bride in 2003, the photographer on the scene from H&H photography studio failed to capture the final fifteen minutes of the reception, including the bouquet toss and the last dance. Mr. Remis was also disappointed to find that the videotape of the six-hour event was only two hours long.

Okay, missing the bouquet toss – while it probably wouldn’t make me lose eight years of sleep – was a mistake. But the last dance is hardly an iconic wedding moment in most peoples’ lives, and believe me, six hours of every sneeze and electric slide is more than the most hardy of home movie viewers usually wants to see of even their own wedding. I would have advised Mr. Remis to tell all his friends he didn’t think H&H did a good job and leave it alone after that.

But Mr. Remis seems ill-acquainted with the art of Letting Stuff Go. He’s demanding that H&H restage his entire wedding at a cost of some $48,000 and bring all the principals together again so that they can capture those precious fifteen minutes… never mind that the marriage ended in divorce in 2009. Incidentally, that’s also the year he got around to filing his lawsuit citing among other things ‘infliction of emotional distress.’ He also claims that the photographs were ‘unacceptable’ in terms of lighting, color, poses, and – I don’t know – flavor?

Among the many fine reasons this seems unlikely to be a practical plan is the fact that Mr. Remis’ ex-wife has apparently returned to her native Latvia leaving no forwarding address.

The judge in the case – Justice Doris Ling-Cohan of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan – is allowing the breach of contract part of the lawsuit to go forward, but has dismissed much of the rest of it, including the emotional distress claim. She even went so far as to quote the title song from the film The Way We Were in mentioning her suspicion that Mr. Remis’ motives may have more to do with his ‘misty water-colored memories’ of his erstwhile marriage than his satisfaction or lack thereof with the services of H&H photography studio.

Mr. Remis, please. Your marriage is over. Your wife left the country. For the sake of your own sanity, if no other reason, just drop it.

It’s official. Just seventy-two days after the wedding, and long before the eternal loop of the encore presentations (remember when they were called ‘re-runs’ and only watched by sad, lost people too tragically unhip to make time for the first airing?) comes to an end, Kim Kardashian has filed for divorce from brand-spanking-new husband Kris Humphries.

As is to be expected in cases like this, rumors and blame are rife throughout the media. Kardashian responded with a flurry of tweets denying that she married for the publicity and money (she assures us all the money from her wedding gifts will be donated to the Dream Foundation… though I do believe Miss Manners would council her to consider returning them to the family members, friends and well-wishers who gave them if they are still in good condition, and the last time I checked, cash has a pretty significant shelf life) and assuring us she married truly for love.

“We filmed Kourtney giving birth, Khloe getting married, break ups, make ups, our best moments and our worst moments,” she writes. “These were all real moments. That’s what makes us who we are. We share, we give, we love and we are open!”

… and that’s kind of the thing, Kim. When you choose to live your life so very publicly, people will insist on having opinions about your life. It’s part of the contract. And some of those people will not think terribly highly of you, especially when you have a gigantic, public, media circus wedding followed by a marriage that lasts less than three months.

Kardashian insists that she just got ‘caught up with the hoopla and filming of the TV show’ to the point that she didn’t know how to break off the relationship. And I will say that Kim Kardashian is not the first bride to utter similar words of regret and confusion in the wake of a brief, disastrous marriage. I’ve heard more than one bride say that she really wasn’t sure when she was standing at the altar, but didn’t know how to stop the train at that point.

Look, what you or I think of Kim Kardashian as a person isn’t that important. Frankly, I prefer to think of her as little as her painfully public existence allows. But I think we can all take a moment to learn a Life Lesson from this sordid little tale: if you’re not really sure of the relationship, Don’t Get Married Anyway. A good friend of mine got married anyway. She’s now in the middle of a divorce and bemoaning the ten years she wasted on a marriage that never for one day made her truly happy.

If at any point along the way you find yourself seriously feeling trapped, unhappy, or fearful about being married to the person you said ‘yes’ to, slow things down. If you’re standing at the altar and the words ‘I do’ start to choke you, it’s still not too late. Don’t get married until you’re certain it’s what you want, and this is the person you want it with.

Your happiness matters.

Kevin Cotter is trashing the dress… his ex-wife’s wedding dress, that is. Over and over and over again.

You see, Cotter and his wife got divorced last year and she left her wedding dress behind. She apparently didn’t feel the need to get it back and Cotter was at a loss at first what to do with it. According to the interview he did last month with The Man Registry, he brought the question up at a family dinner and asked for suggestions.

Luckily, he rejected the first entirely crass suggestion from his brother… but he did get inspired to play with the idea of all the ways he could use the dress in non-traditional ways. Thus the blog My Ex-Wife’s Wedding Dress was born.

So far the uses have included things like: place mat (hmmm… looks more like a tablecloth), draft stopper, kite, Darth Vader scarecrow, and my personal favorite, Christmas tree skirt. Cotter even wore it as his Halloween costume last year. That’s the picture at the top, incidentally.

What do I think of all this? Well, it would seem Mr. Cotter has found a creative way of exorcising his personal demons. It’s juvenile and a bit ridiculous, but sometimes that’s what it takes to get over a sad end to a hopeful beginning. I think if his ex-wife had wanted to keep the dress safe, she would have done well to take it with her when she left. I think some people are getting a cheap thrill out of the fact that someone else is doing something they wish they could do or had done.

And I think if Mr. Cotter ever remarries, his new lady ought to think carefully before leaving a wedding gown to his tender mercies if things don’t work out.

Oh, and I’m thankful that Mr. Twistie and I remain ridiculously contented with one another.

Yes, this is a shameless Oscar Tie In article.

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford both won that coveted statuette… and then had their marriages end. They aren’t alone, either. The same can be said of: Sanrda Bullock, Liza Minelli, Halle Berry, and Faye Dunaway.

In fact, the Best Actress Oscar curse has been much discussed over the years, with observers noting that winners of that particular award are more likely to divorce within the next few years than any other Oscar winner. But now the rumor has been investigated and found to be true by Sue Moon and Tiziana Casciaro of the University of Toronto and Colleen Stuart of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh for their paper The Oscar Curse: Status Dynamics and Gender Differences in Marital Survival.

Moon, Casciaro, and Stuart have found that Best Actress winners are about 1.68 times more likely to divorce than non-winners. Winning the Best Actor Oscar doesn’t seem to have a similar effect on men, incidentally.

So what does that mean for this year’s nominees? Well, the only one who is actually married (though Natalie Portman is engaged) would appear to be Nichole Kidman. If she wins, we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed for her and hubby Keith Urban.

An article I read recently riffs on the notion that allowing homosexuals and bisexuals to marry would somehow negatively impact the sanctity of marriage by positing that us heterosexuals (or as commenter David would say, str8s) are doing a fine job of making marriage a joke.

[New York Senate Democrat Diane] Savino’s argument was shocking and fresh. After an affecting nod to gay constituents, she began her genuine work. She dared us to consider the condition of contemporary marriage.

The sanctity of marriage, she said, could not possibly be endangered by permitting its access to same-sex couples. If there is any threat to the sanctity of marriage, she said, ”it comes from those of us who have the privilege and the right, and we have abused it for decades”.

”What are we really protecting?” she asked before reminding us that, these days, husbands could be snared on television game shows.

The article goes on to describe how trashing the dress makes a mockery of marriage and that brides and grooms are focusing on everything from the wedding favors to the flavor of the cake instead of putting their energy into the marriage itself. While I, to some extent, can get behind the second point — namely that there are some brides and grooms who go ga-ga over the wedding without really thinking about what marriage means, I really doubt those people are in the majority. Some people take marriage lightly, but thus far, all those people have been heterosexual. It might turn out that homosexuals and bisexuals do a better job of preserving the sanctity of marriage, if only because they had to work so much harder for it.

And I simply cannot get behind the first point. The wedding isn’t the marriage; one can have the most frivolous of weddings and the most serious of marriages. Wearing one’s wedding dress into a pond to capture what have now become fairly ordinary photographs doesn’t mean one is any less committed to one’s spouse. At most, it could mean one is less committed to one’s wedding dress. Weddings are made of ceremonies and celebrations that commemorate a commitment. They aren’t the commitment itself!

But yeah, divorce. If trashing the dress doesn’t negatively impact the sanctity of marriage and letting gay folks marry won’t negatively impact the sanctity of marriage, maybe it’s divorce? Maybe divorce itself is the problem?

After all, one of the most simplistic arguments against gay marriage suggests that allowing it would lead to more divorce, though it’s never specified whether that’s because there’d be a larger body of married people seeking out divorces or because all us heterosexuals would be running out to get divorced because we’re super psyched that we can marry within our own gender pool now. “Gay marriage is legal now? Oh, snap! I’mma get me one of those! Bye, honey. I loved you once, but the pull of the gay is too strong to resist!”

In any case, a more important question might be: Does it matter? Frankly, I don’t care if allowing homosexual couples to marry would lead to a higher divorce rate. I don’t actually care much if my fellow heterosexuals do all the divorcing, either. The right to marry, after all, is bundled with the right to divorce. At will. For pretty much any reason. And as terrible a thing as divorce can be, it’s also the institution — if I might call it that — that allows abused women and men to escape their abusers… allows children to grow up in homes that aren’t clouded by anger… allows two individuals who might be perfectly good people but aren’t *good together* to have a second chance at happiness.

Should all people have the right to marry the consenting adults they choose to marry? Abso-freaking-lutely. Should all people have the right to divorce the whomever they choose to divorce? Again, yeppers. Do either of those rights make a mockery of marriage? I don’t think so. And for goodness sake, can we all agree that trashing the dress is not leading to divorce? Because that’s just plain silly.

We all know that divorce isn’t funny. You can bake and consume (or smash) all the divorce cakes you want. You can even buy a little casket for your wedding rings. But the reality is that divorce is still a costly and sad process that ends up hurting a lot of people one way or another.

Divorce parodies, on the other hand? They’re still pretty funny, even if a tad mean spirited. Let’s say that laughing at this send-up of the dancing processional video is a guilty pleasure, even though I’m sure the creators don’t harbor any actual ill will toward Jill and Kevin.