Are whirlwind weddings ever a good idea?

As Katie Price weds boyfriend of eight weeks, we ask if whirlwind relationships are a good idea.
Katie Price shocked her fans when she revealed she had married her boyfriend of eight weeks, Kieran Hayler, in a whirlwind ceremony in the Bahamas.
Explaining the reason behind her quick union, the mother-of-three defended her decision – saying she was just ‘following her heart.’
And while a flurry of critics have been eager to lash out at her heading up the aisle with her very new boyfriend, she’s by no means the first celebrity to rush down the aisle.
Russell Brand and Katy Perry dated for just three months before they got engaged. Their marriage was as short too; barely lasting their first anniversary.
Renee Zellweger, Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson are just some of the other names whose lightening-fast marriages have shocked us.
Of course it’s not just celebrities who get married quickly – us mere mortals do it sometimes too. But do whirlwind marriages ever work?
One view could be that those who do rush into unions are old school romantics.
Who hasn’t, in the first flush of a relationship, been tempted to skip down to the register office and get married immediately?
Most of us dismiss these thoughts as mere lust, but for those who do end rushing into a marriage, it’s often because they’ve mistaken feeling loved up for being in love.
Attraction is a big part of true love but the remaining elements are often things which need to develop over time.
There’s the joy of finding out about our partners bit by bit, and falling in love as we do. There’s meeting each other’s friends and family and realising that, more or less, these are people we’d like to spend more time with.
There’s discovering our partners’ bad points and deciding that, on balance, we love them anyway. And, similarly, going through a difficult time and having a partner who can support us through it can be a vital part of knowing whether we can and want to say ‘I do’.
Speeding down the aisle gives a couple barely any time to work out whether they have enough of the same interests, values and experiences to sustain a happy life together.
And as any couple who’s spent a year or so planning a wedding can tell you, if you still want to get married after endless planning politics, then you’re onto a good one.
We hope that in the eight weeks Katie and Kieran spent together before they got engaged, they learnt enough about each other to know they’re going to have a happy marriage.
Katie, a devoted mother of three, has already said that Kieran is good with the children, so that’s a promising sign.
And if they’re ever in doubt that speedy marriages can last, they just need to look to Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon.
The couple married just one month after rumours of their romance emerged and, five years later, they seem more in love than ever and have gorgeous little twins Moroccan and Monroe to show for it.
And where did they choose to get married? The very same place as Katie and Kieran – the Bahamas. Could that be a lucky sign? Only time will tell.