Why I'm Glad I got Married In College

So, for those unmarried folks, there's this nifty little thing you have to do before getting married called getting your marriage license.  You go to the happy little county clerk office, tell them your name, age, parents' names, and a bunch of random information in order to get a paper that your officiant fills out after the ceremony and mails back to the county clerk office, who then gives you a gorgeous certificate that you need to do all the fun stuff like change your name, social security number, and get a new license.  Oh, and to change your name on things like your bank account, your insurance cards, and oh yeah, your FAFSA.

Whew. That's a lot.

It's quite fun.

When we got our Marriage License.  Note our excited faces.  It's that fun :)

So while we were picking up our license, I told them my age and the wonderful ladies responded with "Oh but you're just a baby! A child bride!" Then, when a guy in one of my classes saw my rings, he asked if I was married and when I said yes (of course) he asked if I was Mormon or Catholic. I'm still LOLing about his reaction.

No, I'm not an established adult yet. I am quite young, but that doesn't mean that I'm not mentally ready or mature enough to make this decision. Plus, the fact that the average American gets married at a much later age but the divorce rate is still so high shows that maybe age and marriage readiness are not so correlated after all.  And even if I could have a do-over, I wouldn't change a thing. Unless I could go back and marry him even sooner ;)

I've known Blake since my very first day of college. (Or wait, was it the second day? I honestly can't remember.  But if you don't know the story of how we met, you can read it Here)

And since we started dating not long after we met, he's always been my support through the stressful times, my celebration companion in the happy times, and my comforter in the scary or sad times.  But there's something about being married that just solidifies those feelings even more.

In fact, I get all sad walking to class without him there.  Especially now that it's getting cold.  I miss being able to hold his hand inside his pocket or having his arm around me to try and warm me up.  It's the little things, folks.

I'm going to admit something.  While we were dating, especially at the beginning, I was very insecure about our relationship.  I would very often worry that he would find someone he loved more than me and just be gone.  I thought every fight would be the end of things.  But now, I know he's stuck with me forever :)

Also, living with someone who has to get up and go to work makes it hard to sleep in and skip class.  I think that's why it's good that we only have one car right now- if I don't get up and decide to skip one class, that means I have to skip all my classes and work.  Which means I would be bored at home all day.  Because I'm weird, I don't really like people but I like to have my socializing time.

Also, the struggling is fun.  Sure, it may have been easier for us to wait until he was out of law school and established and we had more money instead of being poor students, but that's all part of the fun.  We get to build our wealth together.  We will have great stories of the time we ate nothing but Ramen and Jolly Ranchers to survive (Ok, that's not true. But I can't think of any good stories about a struggle right now so bear with me :)

But, the reason I'm most glad I got married in college: How many older couples are there who say they wish they had found each other earlier so they could have more time with each other? There's a very small percentage in the world who can say they met their spouses under the age of 20, and I'm one of them.  I didn't want to waste a single moment of our lives together.  And When I'm 80 and we're having our 60th Anniversary, We will look at each other and say: We couldn't have met soon enough.

Because as someone wise once said,(but don't ask me who) (Ok, actually it's Harry from When Harry Met Sally) "When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible"

This was taken the night we first decided to get married :)

And this was when we made it official :)