"Do you take yourself to be your lawfully wedded partner, to love and care for yourself, in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer, as long as you alone will live?"
"I do."
"Then I pronounce you joined in marital bliss. You may kiss yourself."
Solo weddings in the Japanese city of Kyoto have captured a niche market for single women. A two day package with hotel, dress, flowers and ceremony can cost about $2,500. The company says it is designed to help women have positive feelings about themselves. Really? It also appears to be catching on in America. Well, where there's a buck to be made?
Now that women have discovered the joy of walking down the aisle alone, it's only a matter of time before blokes follow their example in this age of equality. Actually, I can see certain advantages of men marrying themselves.
No one will shout at them for leaving up the toilet lid, being home late from the office smelling of drink, leaving their socks and dirty underwear on the bedroom floor, living on a diet of take-away meals and having a 52 inch 3-D television that will only receive sports programmes and Playboy TV.
And it might give an air of mystery to a chap who wed himself if he subsequently embarks on an extra marital affair with a woman. "We'll have to be discreet. I'm a married man, you know."
For ladies, the attraction may be in being able to spend a weekend in bed with the complete boxed set of Downton Abbey, eat as much chocolate as they like and never have to ask their other half: Does my bum look big in this?
But we all have two sides to our personalities, don't we? The cautious and the wild? The angel and the devil? That alone could be a a recipe for disaster.
"I think I'll decorate the bedroom," says the newly married bride. "Pink walls, white furniture and fluffy cushions."
"Over my dead ego," says her soul mate. "I want red and black. Dramatic and sexy, like Christmas underwear."
"Oh, I don't think I could live with that."
"Then move out, dear, because that's the way it's going to be."
How long before the first solo divorce?