Why I'm Getting Married Young

By Benjamin Green on July 19, 2013

I’m 18 years old. I’m turning 19 in November, and am getting married to the love of my life on January 4th, 2014.

We’re young. We’ll be poor. But we’ll have enough to get by, and for that we couldn’t be happier.

One of our engagement photosThere are four main reasons why I decided to propose:

  • First and foremost, I’m a Christian and felt it was God’s will, after spending many months in prayer.
  • I love her!
  • We’re financially ready: we both have scholarships for school, and I have a job and make enough to cover other expenses.
  • We’re both 100% committed to spending the rest of our lives together (and had discussed this multiple times before I proposed).

Having established all of the above, I decided it was silly to wait!

Thankfully, the vast majority of our respective family members and friends have been very supportive of us getting married. Nevertheless, we have received some criticism as well.

Some common negative things people have said:

  • You’re too young. How can you be sure?
  • You should wait until you’re done with college.
  • But you’ll be poor!
  • Don’t you want to have fun in college?

Yes, we’ll be poor, and yes, we want to have fun in college, but our idea of fun is more time spent together, not living the “college lifestyle,” frequenting parties and such. We know it might seem harder to stay in school, but we’re both passionate about our degree path. As for how can we be sure, I’ve been sure since we started dating that I’d never want to be with anyone else, and like I said, we’d talked and prayed about getting married for months.

So why put this on Uloop?

Admittedly this post is mostly personal revelation, but the reason I wanted it on Uloop is to help you throw out our culture’s idea that getting married is for old, boring people who are done having fun and not “living it up” anymore. You can defy the status quo and still be okay. The word marriage might have a hostile ring to it as a college student, but it doesn’t need to. Marriage brings about (I’m told) the most fun years of your life, so why not get a head start?

It may not be for everybody, but my fiancée and I are looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together. And I hope that you won’t let the values of our culture force you into or out of any choices that you should make.

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