What if they gave a contest with a $10,000 first prize and nobody came? That's what happened to the organizers of the "Marriage for a Lifetime" competition in Atlanta.
The woman behind the big bounty - which also includes free flowers, free wedding invitations, a paid-for photographer and an on-the-house honeymoon - is Phillipia Faust. She was offering up the small fortune to any engaged couple who wanted to enter.
But with a deadline of October 31st fast approaching, not a single couple has taken her up on the deal and it doesn't appear anyone will. Why not? To win this contest, you've got to agree not to have sex before the wedding. And it appears no one is willing to do it - or not do it, as the case may be.
The bargain this Faust wanted to strike was designed to show that abstinence really does make the heart grow fonder. She runs an education program on the subject that's subsidized by the government and is unaffiliated with any religious group. And she was hoping the prize money would attract attention.
It has, but for a reason she never expected.
When not even a single couple responded to the offer, Faust was stoic. "In our society it's going to be hard to find" a couple that hasn't had premarital sex, she shrugs.
With time running out, she's bent her own rules. She now says she'll take entrants who've done the deed without benefit of a marriage licence, but only if they acknowledge they shouldn't have.
Still nothing.
Among the rules of the contest: they have to live in the area served by her clinic, they have to undergo premarital counseling and they have to agree to let up to 100 strangers come to their ceremony, all designed to foster a marriage that will 'last a lifetime.'
But with no entrants, it appears that's also how long this local community worker will be waiting for someone to actually get in line for the prize.