Now that I think about it, maybe the reason that so many of my college friends (few childhood friends went to college) got married shortly after graduating was because we were all engineers and would be jumping into stable employment with decent salaries immediately. Same thing with my wife’s friends, mostly consisting of RNs. Careers with more uncertainty could delay the feeling that it is time to root oneself.
@ magnetron-
That is a good point. My wife and I lived together after college (we got married at 25), but both of us were either in pretty stable careers and/or were getting master’s degrees, again towards a stable career. But with my S, who is a music performance student, we have told them (though he knows well) that his future is one of those things that unfolds as it happens. He could find himself freelancing someplace, he could decide to go to grad school (which with music is not as straightforward as in an academic oriented program), almost all of it is up in the air, which would make having a formal, deep relationship very problematic (especially if the SO happened to be a fellow music student:).
I was an engineer and I got married not long (i.e., still 2 years) after college.
@HImom, for your 2nd niece, if she gets married soon, how will she and her BF finance their wedding and honeymoon expenses, if both of them are/were just traditional students and their wedding was not a small “cheap” one (say, a wedding with 150 people as mentioned in several wedding threads)?
@musicprnt, My wife and I got married in a similar situation. After we had got married and before she got a stable government job, we lived in the same city where her original family lived. Almost every day when I went to work, she took public transportation to her original home. So the life style change for her after married was very minimal, just that she went to our rented apartment, prepared dinners before I was home and slept there. After she started to work (in the same city), her job was very stable and not stressful (getting the job was a stressful process: likely only a few hundreds among 20k applicants would get the job by taking a test. She was a good tester - She ranked 5th among 20k test takers so she could take a job in the “desirable” largest city where I worked.)
We had very relaxed and happy 4 years right after our marriage. (The real tough work ahead for both of us had not started yet!)
I have no idea how anyone finances their wedding and if I’m not contributing to it, don’t feel it’s my place to inquire. The one who is getting married is having a reception at the country club her parents are members of. The other niece (sister) is not yet engaged, but is earning money as a resident and I believe her BF will be earning money as a resident as well. She has no debt, so she has money to contribute towards whatever she wants to. I have no idea whether she will end up marrying this BF, but they are pretty serious. I suspect if he gets placed near where she is and they work out details, they may well decide to marry, but they’ve been together for less than a year, so it’s difficult to KNOW for sure yet. They are VERY close for such a short relationship.
HImom, Thanks.
The “income” of a resident is only about 50k a year and it is not easy to save for weddings/marriage especially if living in a high COL area, I think. So the burden could be on parents (just like college education expenses) unless they delay their marriage until they themselves save enough for this costly event, I think.
Weddings do not have to be costly. I’m getting married a month after graduating from grad school and my partner has only really been working for about a year and a half in a poorly paid hourly job.
We’re having a wedding we can afford. We have a little parental help but not much. This means a small guest list, no hall rental, etc.
Despite what the media says, the vast majority of people have affordable weddings.
Yes, as has been pointed out in the numerous wedding threads, wedding prices can range from dirt cheap to “sky’s the limit.”. I really try not to probe as I don’t feel it’s any of my business. If either of our kids met a SO and wanted to marry, we would try to contribute significantly toward a wedding (providing we thought it was a good idea for our child, of course). Since neither of our kids have introduced us to any SOs, I don’t think we have any eminent weddings in our immediate family. We believe S may be seeing someone who lives in a different city, but he neither confirms nor denies.
My response was to mcat who, I believe, thinks that Americans must spend a ton of money on weddings in order for them to be appropriate.
I actually believe many or likely even the majority of the young generation of Americans are relatively more “level headed” about not spending money frivolously.
An interesting story: Several of us had a farewell lunch at our company to send off an intern who will go back to grad school. A coworker originally from Indian (as a new immigrant) happened to sit next to me. We talked about the wedding and honeymoon cost. He said if he got married today, he would likely need about $5000 US dollars only. I feel that his estimate is likely on the low side or he is too “inexperienced” to know this (he has been graduated from an MS program for 3 years so he is really not that young.) But I somehow has a bias that many parents from the east Asia or the south Asia tend to “baby” their offspring so it could be the case that he really does not know much about this. (He once told me that he was expected to call his parents every evening so you could tell the dynamics in his family. He also told me that his parents could share everything they have with him, no matter how old he is. It was an “eye opening” to me how close he is with both his parents and his siblings - much closer between me and my child.) Also, he took vacations in Hawaii two times in the past two years (likely their family’s destination reunion - his PhD parent seems to work all over the world as a petro/chemical engineer) so he is really not that poor (As a comparison, I have never had a vacation at an expensive place like Hawaii in my whole life.)
Several of the folks who went to law school with me had inexpensive weddings–reception with punch and cake and cookies in the backyard of a family member, after a quick and modest ceremony. One of them did rent a hall and have serve dinner for those who attended. We got married after I had worked at my career for 5 years and H had worke for much longer so we were able to afford what we wanted for our wedding, honeymoon, etc. My folks wanted a 7 course Chinese dinner at a nice hotel, so we said that everyone would pay for the guests they invited who were attending. It worked out fine for everyone–no drama and no griping about paying for people that weren’t invited by the person paying.
As far as I know, in some countries, there are some “community financing social practice” that works in the following way: For many years, the parents may attend other families’ offspring’s wedding by paying these families. When the offspring of the parents get married, these “other families” will attend their offspring’s wedding and kind of pay back (maybe plus some “interests”) whatever they contributed to them in the past.
Some young generation may not like this kind of wedding but they may reluctantly tolerate what their parents want to do (otherwise this family could not recoup the cost.)
This potential concern is occasionally in my mind. I know our family does not participate in the “community financing” thing because there is really no such practice in US as far as I know. What if the other family has been actively participated in such a “community financong scheme”? Is there any possibility that their family also expects us to do this as well? (But we really can not as we have not done this in the past decades.)
My folks continue to throw these types of parties for their many milestone events–70th bdays, 80th bdays, 90th bdays, 50th anniversary, 60th anniversary, etc. In their case, there doesnt seem to be any expectation of “pay back,” but it makes dad happy so we all go along with it. Generalizations are very dangerous and it’s best not to try to figure oa pattern based on so few data points.
Yes, big bdays are important, The same is true for the very young too, e.g., 1 yo is a big birthday for a grandson/granddaughter (but its significance is likely to a less degree than older parents’ big bdays.)
“Meet SO” is usually followed by a wedding, which is eventually followed by producing the grandchildren. So hopefully we are not off track too much. (Isn’t it true that many CC parents generally love any topics remotely related to the wedding?)
Meeting SO is usually followed by a wedding? News to me shrug
Personally, I had several different SOs before I finally met and married H–more than 10 years later. Many folks meet SOs and the timing isn’t right or they decide for some reason that it’s not THE one or whatever and the relationship dissolves.
Having relationships with SOs is good for growth–learning to compromise and figure out what you value and how to stand up for your ideas while respecting someone you love. Most folks I know had more than one relationship with a SO before they decided to marry. There’s a lot of timing and some luck involved, in my opinion.
Yes, in HI, 1st birthdays tend to be a “big deal.” We opted NOT to make our kids’ big (kept it to about 40-50) because we had a HUGE wedding and our kids honestly at that age (and even today) don’t really like larger gatherings than 40-50 (nor do we). Even for their grad parties, they and we preferred and kept it low key with mostly extended family–at a house or nearby country club. Since their cousins graduated the same year as our kids, we have a joint grad party for our kid and a cousin both years.
Well, “usually” is indeed an adverb word that is too strong in this context.
I was extremely lucky. I met my SO in college and the wedding was indeed followed later (after I was graduated.). This may not be the norm, especially nowadays when people have more opportunity to meet people of potential love interest, and more importantly, people may move more frequently and tend to move farther away (and it seems it often takes longer to establish a career as compared to a couple of generations ago.)