Jamie_L

I'm with the folks who think getting married may be a case of shooting yourselves in the foot with respect to financial aid in higher education. Furthermore, it may also cut off aid from your parents. However, there's a slim chance you could be better off: parental finances tend not to count towards financial aid calculations if you are married. If your parents didn't cut you off, you could end up better off. Bottom line: know exactly what the financial results will be, if that's important.

It seems that you are in a situation where both of you are still somewhat dependent on your parents. If that is the case, it seems best not to rock that boat unnecessarily.

Have you thought about having a personal cermemony that is not official in the eyes of the state? Something that professes an extra level of commitment to the world (or at least to those closest to you, and to each other, of course), but something that doesn't show up on tax documents, financial aid forms, or church rosters.

Then, when other factors calm down later, if you still feel strongly about it, you could make it legal.

Ulitmately, however, marriage is a fiction made real only because people want to make it real. You don't necessarily need other peole to tell you you're married if you believe you are.

(Says the 31-year-old who has been married for six years. )

Jamie

ohwilleke

I got married while I was in law school after being engaged for two years before that, including time when my wife was still in college. A few of the pros and cons.

1. Being married imposes an emotional burden to live together on you that is much greater than being boyfriend and girlfriend. This greatly influences how you make decisions on where you go to graduate school, etc. At your age, the two of you, as a couple, will have probably four or five big "where do we live" discussions, as each of you makes a graduate school, first job, and even second job decision.

Being married as you face these decisions makes it more likely that one or both of you will end up compromising your career or educational options. On the other hand, if you don't get married, the likelihood that the two of you will wind up in different places and drift apart and lose a chance at a life together are much greater.

Differing expectations about fidelity can also lead to incredible strife when people are a long distance couple, something that rarely happens for married couples (who may be weak and give into temptation, but at least have the same expectations).

2. Being poor, young graduate students isn't a bad thing. Most people have extremely happy times despite this poverty. The bigger problem has to do with expectations. You have expectations and values about how committed you will be to your career and other values in life. So does your loved one. Indeed, you have these ideas about each other. But, it is hard to articulate even your own aspirations and values in the abstract. Values about work and family are mostly matters of degee and not direction.

If the two of you have different expections, this can lead to serious marital strife when things don't turn out as expected. The "we were going to be rich" or "I thought you were somone else" conversation happens frequently in both directions in my family. Why? Because neither of us had gotten out in the real world and based our expectations on that. Marriage is a huge expectations game. Happiness or disappointment has as much or more to do with how you and your spouse live up to your expectations as it does with how good things are in any absolute sense.

3. I think you have financial aid expectations backwards. It is uncommon to get anything but loans for an MBA (after all, your supposed to go on to making money). In contrast, a math major is quite likely to get institutional support. She is likely to be better off married than relying on parental income in pursuing loans for an MBA. It is hard to tell how you would fair, since the mix of aid for math or comp sci graduate school is more varied.

This said, parental support usually is more forthcoming to a single child, than a married one, especially if the parents don't approve of the spouse.

One benefit of being married, for me, was that I got on my wife's health insurance, as she was first a library drone, and then a TA.

Another collateral effect of marriage, which is both a pro and a con, is that if you have a big wedding (not necessarily recommended), you acquire huge amounts of loot. My 9th anniversary is coming up in a month, and a majority of the personal possessions in our home probably still date from our wedding. This is a con, because it is expensive to move all that stuff when you haven't really settled in once place yet, but is a pro because you have lots of stuff to use.

4. I urge you to screw parental funding for a wedding if necessary. I had the big, wife's parents' funded wedding, which was too big, too religious, and involved hundreds of people we barely knew. But, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Getting married doesn't have to be expensive. While $1,000 may be a bit of a tight budget, it can be done for that much, and it certainly doesn't have to be a $10,000 extravaganza. I would have had fonder memories with an intimate, personal wedding. But, some women have spent their whole life building up to a big dream wedding, and if that is what your spouse will need, parental funding and compromises are the only way to achieve that. Certainly, however, you shouldn't take multiple jobs to have a big wedding. It simply doesn't make sense. Make a budget you can afford.

5. The flip side of the problems with being married, are the problems with being engaged. A long engagement is hell. We got married when we did in part because more than two years of it was more than I could stand. Engagement is ambiguous, invites pressure from friends and family about when it will happen, has an entirely different code of ettiquette attached to it than either being boyfriend-girlfriend or a married couple, and gets old when Thanksgiving after thankgiving people ask when you are getting together and whispher about whether you are really serious.

Breaking off an engagement, when it happens, has all the social and emotional downsides of a divorce, with none of the redeeming virtues of being freed of legal bonds to each other.

Yet, a long engagement provides a tempting opportunity to get cold feet at every major decision. There is no real agreed commitment to work through hard times between you.

6. Marrying younger has the benefit of allowing you to enjoy life as a married couple for a while before rushing into having kids. Life as a married couple without kids is fun. You always have a date. Taking trips is easy. You are able to do fun things, and have a companion while doing them. Unemployment is not such a big thing, since a few months without a job is not a big deal when one of you is working. Your financial needs as two childless adults are modest. You can sleep together when you visit parents and not get in trouble for it. Parents have to be more restrained in criticizing spouses since they know that their only choices are to get used to your spouse, or to encourage either divorce or alienation from them, and most parents don't want to go there (while unmarried partners, they have an incentive to drive off if they don't like them).

Too many people get married and have kids right away (which is something you feel pressure to do if you wait too long).

On the other hand, there is something to be said for having spent time being single. I've spent only a few months of my life when I was both over 21 and not in a serious relationship. I basically missed out on the whole nightclub, bar scene, flirting drama that most people experience in their twenties, and probably have as big of a perspective on who is out there in the world and what I want out of a relationship, as I might have. But, when your already engaged, it is too late to be talking about that.

RevDahlia

I don't know from finances, but those issues have been addressed admirably in other responses. Etiquette-wise, though, your fiancee's relatives may only issue decrees about the wedding if they are paying for it. So, you could bite the bullet and let them pay for the big shindig, and grit your teeth during the Catholic-y parts, and then rake in the gifts and laugh all the way to the bank. Or, you could elope. But the fams may not both dictate the content of the wedding and refuse to pay for it.

Choking down unwanted religious bushwah may be worth it for eventual family harmony's sake. Remember you're stuck with these people. I would have a fit, personally... perhaps you could get married privately with sympathetic friends, and then do the hoo-ha later, knowing in your secret heart that you're already married?

I know this isn't exactly what you're asking about, but it is good to know.

never been there

I think ohwilleke laid out the pros and cons very well and with some obvious knowledge as well as experience.

Cost-wise, you can't beat eloping. My brother did it because they couldn't afford to invite everyone who would feel hurt at not being invited, so they invited no-one, took out the Yellow Pages and found a nice lady minister who did the ceremony the way they asked. Just tell your families that for your own reasons you both felt strongly about paying for your own wedding and that's all you can afford right now. They and some other friends who did the same have fond memories of their weddings, all the more because it was a more private, couple-oriented event.

boingo82

My husband and I got married this May, at the Rio chapel in Las Vegas (2 hours away). For $150 + another $50 for the courts, they took care of everything. Staying there 2 nights was $110, and we had family only present so it was very nice and intimate. The minister asked both of us separately whether we wanted God in our ceremony - we hadn't discussed this beforehand - and we both gave the same answer, no. His mom was happy because we had an actual wedding that she could be present at, and my mom was happy because it was cheap ( not a "waste of money" like most weddings) and she didn't have to dress too fancily.
Given the options, I would make the same choice over again, and so would he. Both of us just wanted to be married, and I wasn't the least bit interested in planning anything.
You may want to consider this kind of elope-ish wedding.

Loren Pechtel

I can't recall exactly what we paid, but my memory is under $100 total. Justice of the peace wedding, my parents and a friend from school in attendance. (There was no feasible way to get her parents there--I did not meet them until 7 years later.)
I am not counting her dress in that figure, her father mailed it and I have no idea what he paid for it. Given what prices are like in China, it probably wasn't expensive by US standards.

Loki

Wow.

Best of luck Witty, and I'll probably be in your position in 4 years. I had no idea the finances and logistics of it all are so complicated.

Gawdawful

"By all means, get married as soon as possible. Do not wait until you can afford it. Start having babies as soon as possible. It is your duty." he said, channeling LDS Church "Profit" Gordon B. Hinckley.

Wait. Don't get married. It is an antiquated concept anyway. If two people really are committed to each other, they don't need a dress, flowers, a ceremony, or a piece of paper to make it binding. Marriage isn't binding anyway, as 50% of people that marry, then divorce, can attest. True committment is independent of marriage. If you really must do it, then a JP with a couple of witnesses will do fine and it'll be legal. Take all the moolah you save and take a nice honeymoon trip somewhere...... like New Zealand.

"...in sickness or in health, in good times and bad, unless we don't feel like it anymore...."

Warren in OK

The Other Michael

Or if you live in a state near Warren, I understand that Branson MO is a vacation spot noted for the vast number of godless entertainments for non-theists on honeymoon.

cheers,
Michael

ksagnostic

Get that tongue out of thy cheek!

I think Ohwilleke's reply was wonderful. Evaluate what is most important to you both, and go from there.