The new youthful rebellion? Getting MARRIED!
Once, women who WEREN’T hitched by their mid-20s were judged as failures. But now – as marriage rates plummet – meet the rare tribe of young newlyweds who say...
LAST year, Megan Webb married her teenage sweetheart, Dan, in a classic English country wedding. Like many couples, they pushed the boat out as far as savings would allow: booking a beautiful country house, buying a lace bridal gown and inviting 80 guests. So far so conventional, you might think. Yet behind this traditional white wedding lies a more subversive story — for the couple had dared to tie the knot in the face of scepticism and cultural pressure.
The dissent wasn’t on account of a big age gap or wildly differing backgrounds. Neither was it a shotgun wedding, or one born of necessity because of religious or personal beliefs.
The reason for the trepidation among their family and friends was simply their age. Megan and Dan had barely turned 21 — and in today’s you- only-live- once (so don’t commit too soon) culture, that put them firmly in the minority.
Indeed, last week the Office for National Statistics revealed that the proportion of women in Britain who are married has been declining for a decade and has fallen below 50 per cent for the first time. Those who do marry are older than ever, with a marked increase in over-70s walking down the aisle.
The average age for marriage is steadily creeping upwards, and is now 37.9 years for men and 35.5 years for women.
According to a report by think-thank The Marriage Foundation, only half of those who are teenagers now will ever marry, compared with 90 per cent of those
now in their 60s. So why did Megan and Dan choose to buck the trend?
‘We did it because we wanted to,’ says Megan defiantly. ‘We were in love and knew we wanted to be together for the rest of our lives. Yes, we could have just stayed living together, but we wanted to make a life-long commitment. I’ve always believed in marriage.’
This conviction wasn’t enough to silence their critics, she says: ‘ There were lots of comments along the lines of “you’re so young”, “there’s a whole world out there” and “how can you know that this is ‘The One’?”.’
There are some reasons why Megan and Dan’s friends might have felt justified in their concerns.
The age group with the highest divorce rate is the under-30s, often as the result of an unsuccessful ‘starter marriage’ — one lasting less than five years and with no children having been born. Some fear there is a trend for young couples to tie the knot because they want the attention of a fabulous party, or have romanticised the idea of finding ‘The One’.
But Megan insists this is far from the case for her and Dan.
‘ I see couples waiting till they are 30 or 40 to get married, but none of us knows what’s around the corner, so why would Dan and I wait ten years just to conform to social norms or make other people happy?’
Of course, not so long ago couples routinely married in their late teens or early 20s. These days we tend to infantilise early twentysomethings, deeming them too young to know their own minds, but as recently as the mid-1970s attitudes were very different.
Back then, 28 per cent of all women married by the age of 20, more than three-quarters (77 per cent) were married by the age of 25, and more than 90 per cent were married by the age of 30. The average age of women marrying for the first time was 22 — it was 25 for men — and the first baby usually arrived within the next couple of years.
Yet
last week a report found that we now don’t consider young adults to be fully independent until the age of 26 — later than ever before.
So why have our attitudes changed so dramatically in little more than a generation?
Many experts point to the acceptance of cohabiting and child-rearing out of wedlock, as well as the high cost of the average wedding (£31,000) and an increase in the number of those who have turned against marriage after witnessing parental divorce.
We tend to spend longer in formal education these days, too, while getting on the property ladder — a milestone once associated with marriage — is out of the reach of many, thanks to soaring house prices and stagnant wages.
Harry Benson, from The Marriage Foundation — who himself married at 25 — says: ‘As a society, we have turned our back on marriage to our great peril, viewing it as a status symbol to aspire to only when you have achieved everything else, such as career success and financial security.
‘But there’s an awful lot to be said for marriage being the starting point of the adventure for a couple, and for them learning to shoulder challenges together.’
Megan agrees: ‘Many of my friends think marriage means you can’t go out or do your own thing. But actually, I think being married brings you freedom — the freedom to grow and develop with the person you love most.’
Megan is now 22 and works in marketing for an online fitness platform. She and Dan started dating when they were both 13, after meeting through mutual friends. They moved in together when they were 19 and, with help from their parents, bought their first home two weeks before their wedding.
Dan, a cinema manager, also 22, proposed during a trip to Disneyland Paris in March 2017.
Megan says: ‘ We’d spoken about how lovely it would be if we could one day get married, but I don’t think either of us expected it to happen till our mid-20s.
‘I don’t really know what changed Dan’s mind — I think it just felt like the right time.
‘To prove our commitment, we saved really hard to contribute £8,000 of the £ 14,000 for our wedding and honeymoon in Majorca. Our parents paid for the rest.
‘It still feels strange introducing Dan as my husband and hearing him refer to me as his wife. But being married has made me feel happier, more settled and as though we’re more of a unit.
‘I know lots of people in later life marry because they want to have children, but that wasn’t the deciding factor for us. We’ve always said children will happen at some point but not right now. We married simply because it felt right.’ Dan spoke to his own parents — who have been married for 40 years — and Megan’s before proposing and they all gave their blessing. Megan says: ‘everyone warned us that marriage is hard, and we do bicker over the usual stuff, such as building Ikea flatpack furniture and whose turn it is to do the washing up. But we’re always open and honest. ‘The only downside is waiting for our friends to catch up — although the girl who caught my bouquet is now engaged!’ Yet there are some warning signs that suggest it may be a mistake to marry too soon. While we often tend to think that making the commitment of getting married is good news for a couple’s longevity, experts warn that the age you marry is closely linked to the risk of divorce, with those marrying in their teens and early 20s being at greater risk of splitting up sooner. So, were Megan and Dan unwise to take the leap so soon? S imone Bose, a private practice relationships counsellor who also works for Relate, says: ‘I’ve seen couples marry very young with a lot of success, particularly if — like Megan and Dan — they aren’t in any hurry to have kids.
‘This gives them time to enjoy just being a couple. They tend to be conscientious and want to take care of their relationship.
‘Yes, when you meet someone when you’re older, the chances are you know yourself better. But the flip side is that you can be stuck in your ways, whereas when you’re young there is an opportunity to grow together.’
Megan agrees: ‘Because we’ve been together since we were 13, I am who I am because of Dan. We have grown — and learned to become adults — side by side. I think that makes us stronger; I’ve never known anything other than having Dan by my side.’
DEtermined
to prove their own commitment to getting married young, business development managers emma Christophi, now 25, and husband Andrew, 26, paid for their £20,000 wedding in June 2017 themselves, including a honeymoon to Dubai and the Maldives.
The couple met at school when emma’s friend was dating one of Andrew’s friends. That romance lasted all of a week, while emma and Andrew have now been together for nine years.
‘We knew quite quickly that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together,’ says emma, who lives in Bedfordshire.
‘We have the same mentality that you can work through things if you really want to be
Our friends made lots of comments like ‘you’re so young’, ‘there’s a whole world out there’ and ‘how can you know this is The One?’