Young millennials today have quite a bit of difficulty marrying at their age. Many see them as being in a rush to tie the knot, when it may just be that they have met their special someone at a younger age.
At the age of 19, I am already ready to settle down and start my life together with my boyfriend of almost three and a half years. Marriage has been a huge topic of discussion, especially for me lately, I mean I’ve got everything picked and ready to go! However, a lot of my family is not exactly on board with the idea of me getting engaged and possibly married before I even graduate college. Our generation has had a tough time trying to justify marrying in their late teens and early twenties to elders who say to wait until we are ready. I know both my grandparents and parents married young, with my Grandma getting married at 18 and my mother at 20. The only person on my mother’s side of the family that did not marry before the age of 21 was my aunt, who married at 25.
Older generations were able to marry in their late teens or early twenties and the majority of the time were married for the rest of their lifetimes. In my opinion, some people in our current generation are too focused on going out and partying with their friends or hooking up. That is completely fine as everyone should be able to live their lives how they want, but older generations view it as immaturity. When someone today says they are marrying young they are seen as rushing into it or not thinking it through.
I have dreamed of getting married for about 10 years, as I was not the kind of little girl that talked about getting married and being a mom. My current boyfriend and I have been together since the beginning of our sophomore year of high school, and though we have gone through a lot both together and separately. We have plenty of experience with communicating and working together on issues, along with our recent decision to get a kitten and start looking into moving in together. I have become an extremely organized person, so I have almost completely planned out my entire wedding and we are not even engaged yet.
My family is not the most accepting of my choices in life, and one of the biggest ones being my boyfriend, as they choose to see him in a negative light even though he has been the most positive force in my life. This has made the idea of a wedding slightly harder because as much as I wish for my family to attend, they have already stated they would not if I was marrying my boyfriend. While many people may see younger marriages in a negative light, many people live their lives happily ever after, like a fairytale. As a final snippet of advice, do what you believe is best for you because the only one who truly knows you is yourself, and maybe you’ll find your happily ever after early too.