The tabloid headlines recently screamed that Kim Kardashian's decision to file for divorce was a shocking surprise.

Really? Did anyone not see this coming? In fact, I can almost bet their wedding vows were taken to an oath of Nielsen ratings and media deals.

A headline I saw on the Internet announced that Kim said she "had gotten caught up in the hoopla" and that was why she had rushed into marriage. I am sure the dollar signs had something to do with it too, more so than any giddiness over being a bride.

I too got caught up in the hoopla once.

After I dated the Ex for seven years, he proposed. I think we both figured we had spent a good chunk of our youth dating each other and it was time to tie the proverbial knot. We had glaring differences in our personality and belief systems that should have warned us both not to walk down the aisle, but we did it anyway.

And I being 25 years old wanted that wedding, darnit. I wanted the showers, the gift registering, and the gushing over the details.

"I'll give you $10,000 to not go through with it," is how Mama greeted me on the morning of the wedding. "You don't have $10,000," I replied.

"I can get it," she said, Virginia Slim 120 poised by her head. "Don't ask me how, but I will."

I didn't take her up on her offer and went through with the wedding any way, the Ex being threatened by my grandfather's friends and assorted uncles. Four years later, I was re-thinking the whole 10 grand thing and how that could have lasted longer than our marriage.

Then I met Lamar. I joke I am still waiting for him to propose as his way of asking me to marry him was by telling me to hang up the phone, he was coming to get me and we were getting married.

There was no hoopla this time. Heck, my wedding band was less than 10 bucks from Walmart and there still hasn't been a honeymoon.

Maybe Kim didn't realize that when the cameras stop rolling you have to kind of like the person you're married to. Notice I didn't say love; I think love can be overused at times and thrown around too loosely.

No, you've got to like the person you are married to.

Marriage ain't pretty by any means - it's a lot of hard work, a lot of compromise and a lot of both people giving 100 percent, all the time.

There's times when there's screaming, crying, pitching of fits and days of dogged stubbornness - and that's just me. It's not an easy road to hoe, but it's a decision you should take seriously, not one based on hoopla.

Nope, you could actually say we had zero hoopla. But we've been married long enough to surely be in syndication by now.

Sudie Crouch is an award-winning humor columnist and certified life coach. She lives in the north Georgia mountains with her family and four insane, but fairly well behaved dogs.