For believers in marriage, this poem is for you. It should be recited by the best man (or woman) at a wedding, instead of inflicting a tedious speech about the groom’s teenage acne and college indiscretions on the gathered throng.

Here, the castle is a metaphor for marriage, and finding a partner for that marriage is compared to stumbling into love (as into an estate agent’s office) and asking for information on the possible relationships (as in properties) in your price range. If the partnership is right, then marriage is the price of the castle. A happy marriage means that you are living in the most marvellous accommodation you could ask for. Actual walls, floors and ceilings are simply peripheral trappings to keep the water out – or not – depending on whether you live on a flood plain or in Tewksbury.

Marriage, requiring the commitment and effort that it does, and being formally documented, is the “rather grand accommodation” that can bring two people more closely together in partnership, or drive them apart as a result of unrealistic (or romantic) expectations. But I believe that if you intend to have a life – and children – with your partner, you shouldn’t mind having a marriage certificate. If your partner says: “It’s only a piece of paper, so why bother?”, you might be tempted to reply that since it doesn’t matter to them they should let you have one.

Of course, the commitment of marriage is a test of two people’s ability to adapt and grow together without losing themselves as individuals, and not everyone makes it, so they lose the castle “when their love runs out it’s repossessed”. They can’t afford it and have to temporarily downsize. Often it’s because two people are incompatible to begin with. Marriage isn’t going to change that; when lust wears off, exposing the vast compromises required to bridge the gap between two disparate individuals, usually the marriage cannot be maintained. No matter how intelligent their efforts, resentment is sure to burn holes in the union.

Here the castle has its rightful buyer, so incompatibility is not a concern, and the “bidding can’t go any higher” because who can be better than the best? When you find the right house, why go on looking? Someone else might snap it up.

If the state of marriage is a metaphorical castle, then what kind of castle would you like? One with a wealthy exterior, intelligently rendered interior and sumptuous soft furnishings? Or something that is more down to earth with room for the dogs and the four-wheel drive? Perhaps something more manageable, like a small castle in the Outer Hebrides perched on the edge of a cliff so you can fish from the turret? And never forget that one man’s garden shed is another man’s castle.

The flats, hotels and campsites on the journey to this castle are metaphors for other, less successful relationships. Now, having found each other, the couple are moving into their “castle with grounds, moat, lake and nature trail”: the kind of castle that those of us already married hope we’re living in. It’s up to us to make sure that we don’t let our castles deteriorate and become someone else’s fixer-upper. frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk

Wedding Poem
by Sophie Hannah
(First of the Last Chances, Carcanet) For Rachel and Ian

Marriage’s rather grand accommodation
Can make a budding love succeed or fail.
We stumble in and ask for information
Regarding all the properties for sale
And marriage is the price-on-application
Castle with grounds, moat, lake and nature trail.

Some kid themselves and think they can afford it
And when their love runs out it’s repossessed
While others, who do better in love’s audit
And whose allegiances deserve the best
Because they are the best, those ones can lord it
Over the squabbling and half-hearted rest.

Today the castle has its rightful buyer,
Its asking price, and it will not be trumped
Because the bidding can’t go any higher;
This is a love that will not be gazumped
By any other applicant, hard-trier
Or any living heart that ever thumped.

Marriage is love’s new house. Love has invested
Its savings wisely, bought the place outright.
It has had several flats, and it has rested
Its head in many a hotel and campsite.
This is the best of all the homes it’s tested.
This is where it will sleep now, every night.

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy