Hey y'all! I'm so stoked for this weekend because Joey and I are going home to visit my family in Maryland! We haven't been back home since the wedding which was a month and a half ago! I miss my hometown so much but I'm slowly adjusting to being married and coming to terms with the fact that now we really are established in PA. I think at some point we'll move back to MD but for now I'm content here.
Today's post is just a little bit about why getting married young was right for us. I understand that it's not for everyone and that's ok. For Joey and me, it was the right decision and I wouldn't change it for the world.
Believe it or not, historically, couples used to get married around the age of 18! How crazy is that? I think about how I'm 22 and just got married and nowadays people think that's nuts. I feel like a lot of times people look at couples who are getting married young and say things like "You're missing out"....what are we really missing out on, though? To be honest, I love knowing that I'm going to have someone there that loves and supports me throughout my entire life!
Going to college at a Christian college, there was definitely a "ring by spring" culture. For those of you that didn't go to a small Christian college, "ring by spring" is essentially the idea that you get engaged by the spring of your senior year. While I wouldn't have minded not getting engaged by the end of college, I did feel a little bit of pressure just because everyone around me was either married or getting engaged. I did, in fact, get the ring by spring but it was something that just happened rather than something I went to college striving for.
When people find out I'm married or, before we got married, engaged, they would say, "You're so young! Why would you want to tie yourself down?" And to that I say, "Well if you know they're the one, why wait?" We did have a long almost 2 year engagement and while I saw everyone else getting engaged and getting married less than a year later, I'm glad we did have a long engagement. We were able to establish ourselves a little bit, grow up a little more, and learn more about each other. We were talking to friends of ours who also went to Messiah and got married a year before us and they were saying that they were glad to have gotten married young because they get to grow up together and I agree with that so much! I want to be able to learn and grow and struggle and figure out life together! I never wanted to marry someone who was already established and had their own house because I didn't want to just fit into their life, I wanted to build a life together. You feel me? Some people are looking for that kind of security but that just wasn't the path I wanted.
Like I said before, I knew I wanted to marry Joey and wanted to build a life together so I didn't feel the need to wait or see what else was out there. 22 was the perfect age for me to get married and maybe it's 19 for you, or 30, or 50! There is no perfect age to get married. What's important is that you want to spend the rest of your life with the love of your life :)
See you guys next week!
XO,
Gabby