<p>9 years from first date to wedding date. Not. Long. Enough.</p>
<p>We got engaged 6 weeks after we met. Met in September (I had graduated from college in May), engaged in October, married in June - it was either get married & go with him or be apart for a year due to his graduate studies.</p>
<p>I was 22 (a month shy of 23) and he had just turned 24. Waited 7 years to have children. We celebrated 27 years in June.</p>
<p>When I first met him & he told me his last name, I thought to myself that I was probably going to marry him & get stuck with the name. I did.</p>
<p>DH and I were high school sweethearts. Broke up when he went off to college. Got back together three years later when he was a senior and I was a freshman in college. Nine months later we got engaged. Nine months after engagement we got married. I was one week shy of my 20th birthday. DH had just turned 23. I finished college and went to work. Had been married almost 5 years when S1 was born. We’ve been married for 29 years.</p>
<p>We met in 1981 in the school library. It was my 2nd year, his first. I was 22 and he was 25. After initially not getting along, we became friends. We were never unattached at the same time until 1989. When we finally got together that year, I became pregnant and had a baby in 1990 and another in 1991. After that, we decided to get married and had three more kids.</p>
<p>Our oldest two tease the younger ones because they weren’t at the wedding.</p>
<p>We will not be empty nesters for another 6 years.</p>
<p>Joan52, We met in the school library, but high school…introduced by a mutual friend. DH swears he knew then that we would be married. Dated a short while in HS then went the “friends” route while dating other. Have been best friends since then. Engaged at 19, married at 20. Lived in the cheapest married student housing and lived on nothing. Grad student stipends were a big raise.
Probably pure luck with choosing mates, but it worked. 36 years coming up. Still best friends.
Pregnant with #1 on our third anniversary but #3 didn’t come along until much later. They are all such a blessing to us that I can’t imagine any other path.
Thankfully none of our kids thought that was a good example to follow.</p>
<p>Met at work, me 24, him 36 first date Feb, engaged Aug, married June, 25 yrs this past June
When your ready and meet the right one who also happens to be ready it happens, long or short engagement whatever works. I do think being a little older is better than very young but it really depends on the individuals. My niece married 8 yrs ago at 20, he 24 they share religion, talents & professional choice, they now have a home, a 2 & 3 y/o with #3 on the way.</p>
<p>Got engaged 25 years ago this week–3 months after we met. (Sure H doesn’t remember the date. . .maybe because my response to his proposal was, “Let me think about it. . .”)
We planned to get married about 7 weeks later, but we were overseas and my mom didn’t like the idea of me marrying a guy she’d never met–and figured I was rushing because I was pregnant (nope.) So we postponed the wedding 2 months until we came back to the States. I was 24; he was 26–about the right age to get married, IMO. When I first met him, I said to myself “There’s something about that guy”–then I almost fainted. I really felt like I met my missing half. Yeah. Destiny and all that. We have 7 kids.</p>
<p>We met playing volleyball–on the same team. He was the only man on our team who was never married. We had our 1st date in February. Got engaged the following July. Married May the year after that. Have been happily married now for 25 years & are still best friends. I was 28 when we were married & H was considerably older.</p>
<p>Love at first sight. Or, rather, at first conversation. I had another boyfriend, at the time. Long story, but we moved in together about a year after the first date (also involved a move.) Lived apart for periods when it made sense for jobs and another degree he got. Then back together. Once we decided to get married, gave ourselves three months to plan that, since his work schedule was tight. Still together after 30 years. Waited a long time for kids. So, the empty nest thing, while hard, reminds us of those earlier, less stressed years.</p>
<p>
Less than six months from first date to wedding date. Four of which were spent apart. Plenty long. It’s been 33 years. I was 23. Didn’t wait at all to have kids. Our oldest is 31.</p>
<p>We met at 19 while sophomores in college and became romantically involved pretty much immediately. I think we both knew that this was the one! We were inseparable from that night on, and have been ever since. We got engaged the summer before senior year and married a week after we finished that year, after having lived together for two years, so, yes, we were young at 22. That was more typical back then. I can’t think of any young couples now that I know who married so young. My two Ds who are married were 27 and 26 when they married.</p>
<p>I had been dating a guy for about a year, but I knew he wasn’t the one. H, who was a friend of a friend, stopped by my desk and asked me out on a tennis date. I said yes, he walked away, I picked up the phone and broke it off with the guy I had been dating. Never saw him again. Married H 18 months later. I knew he was the one the first time I saw him.</p>
<p>Met when we were 19 my junior year his sophomore year. My recollection is that the attraction was pretty much instant and mutual. Shared dorm rooms unofficially for the next year. Then I took a gap year traveling around the country and went to grad school in NY, he finished undergrad and went to grad school in CA. We were apart (but still an item) for four years. When I got my degree I moved in with him in CA and we got married two years later. I think we were officially engaged for 6 months, but we’d been paired off for almost 7 years. We were 27 when we got married. Still married. :)</p>
<p>Husband was a client, met for lunch the first time and came back to my office (all male Wall Street) with a grin and said, “This is the guy I’m going to marry.” They were hysterical. I was 27 he was 29.</p>
<p>Took about 6 months or so for us to start dating as he just broke off with a woman he was living with. Dated for about 2 years, lived together for about 5 years, decided it was time to have kids so got engaged at Thanksgiving, married the end of January, gave birth in November. (Highly recommend a January wedding.)</p>
<p>Would not have wanted to meet him early in my life, loved my freedom during my 20’s.</p>
<p>Met the first week of college (at 19) knew we would be getting married and discussed it that week! Dated 7 years and married (at 26) when we had met our set financial goals (established at “real” jobs). Figured we had most things worked out by then. Celebrated our 25th anniversary this year :)</p>
<p>For those of you who married young (as I did), if your children ask about doing the same how would you respond? I’ve tried to convey that I don’t think it’s such a great idea without sounding as if I regret marrying their dad, but they still give me grief about it. Of course, they don’t want to hear “things were different.”</p>
<p>Silpat, I don’t recall any of my Ds asking about marrying as young as their dad and I did. As I said, my two Ds who have married were older and their 3 sisters are, for the most part, past the age I was so it isn’t an issue. I don’t think any of them would have considered marrying that young but, if they had, I probably would have recommended that they wait a little longer. It’s funny, when I married I remember thinking (with a certain amount of horror!) that when my mom was my age then, she was married with two children. So, it’s true that times do change a bit and kids tend to wait longer these days than they did when my H and I married. I don’t think there’s any one answer that’s right for every couple but I think that, in general, it’s probably wise not to marry too, too young. Having said that, there’s no guarantee of a successful marriage, regardless of what age you are when you marry.</p>
<p>Met dh when I was a foreign student in China at 20. He was also 20 - we have the same birthday coincidentally. He was working at the foreigner’s hotel as a security guard and lived in the college where I was teaching English (and also living). Spent 8 months secretly dating (fraternizing with foreigners was was not actually “allowed” at the time). Came back to the states to return to college and got my parent’s to agree to sponsor him as a foreign student - he got accepted but couldn’t get the visa because they didn’t believe he would return to China. We continued long distance for a bit before my rational mind (and a bunch of friends) got me to reconsider and broke it off over the phone. Three years later, a conversation with a friend, led me to think he was the “one” - so I went to China on my vacation and he proposed when I got off the plane. We were officially allowed to marry 3 wks later (after a whole slew of red tape). (I called my mom from China to let her know I was getting married that day but noone from my side was there) I returned to my job in NY the day after our wedding (which was just a nice banquet) and he finally got the visa 4 months later and joined me in NYC. We’ve been married 24 years today.</p>
<p>Congrats. amanda.
Silpat, my mom was a huge advocate of living an exciting life before marriage- she thought it helped people weather the challenging years, if they had other memories to look back on. Then, a friend of mine said to her: people can marry at 18 and make it 50 years. Or not. They can wait and marry at 30. And make it or not. Too true. I just hope my girls find good men who love them and respect them and believe in the commitment.</p>
<p>I knew my wife for two years.</p>
<p>However, the following story is relevant:</p>
<p>Years before, I was once just about to ask a girl to marry me.</p>
<p>She was beautiful. She was a Wellesley graduate. She even cooked me lobster dinners.</p>
<p>In fact, I would have asked her if I had a ring in my pocket. I was CRAZY about her.</p>
<p>(I was going to give her my grandmother’s ring, which had not yet been mailed to me yet by my mother)</p>
<p>In the meantime, we spent a weekend together with two other couples on a trip.</p>
<p>Well, she turned out to be a terror, picking fights with cabdrivers and waitresses, and being very difficult with my friends as well.</p>
<p>Things were never quite the same after that weekend.</p>
<p>We never married. </p>
<p>But I have always regretted not marrying her, and if I could, I would go back in time, and not go on that weekend trip. </p>
<p>So I am not sure whether getting married quickly is a good idea, or a bad idea.</p>