Hedging their vows.

"Till death do us part." It sounds solemn and permanent--perhaps too permanent for some. Many couples are replacing this marital, promise-which dates from the 1500's--with something more realistic, say, "as long as our love shall last." Historically, most marriages, for better or for worse, did end in death. But not anymore. According to federal statistics, about half of those marrying today for the first time will wind up divorced. When Ulcca Joshi and Christopher Hansen married in 2001, they deliberately omitted any reference to the "till death" clause. "You can't promise at 25 that you're never going to change," says Hansen. The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of New York's Abyssinian Baptist Church, would disagree. When couples ask to replace the traditional, words with an escape clause, he tells them, "We want people, if they make this kind of commitment, to make it for life."