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What''s the average age to get married in your group of friends?

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IrishEyes08

IrishEyes08

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Most of my friends married in their late 20''s, early 30''s. I remember reading somewhere that people who have graduate degrees, live in urban areas and are "professionals" generally focus on their career and education moreso than dating and settling down in their 20''s and typically marry and start families later. Myself and many of my friends fall into these categories which I guess would be why everyone waited a bit to settle down.

How about you girls? What do you think the average age for your married friends and family have been?
 
that sounds like my goup of friends as well. I''m 26, and most of my friends are my age or a couple of years older. Very few of us are married. In fact, most of my friends are still busy dating around and aren''t in long term relationships even.
 
Dunno yet, none of our friends are married except for us!

As far as family, they're all over the place. Our parents married in their early twenties (and are still married now), my siblings in their late twenties and later, my cousins anywhere between 18-35.

We are very focused on our careers. We just happened to meet during college (undergrad), when we had some time to date. If I'd graduated single, I probably would have stayed that way until at least my late twenties.
 
That depends on the group of friends! I have to agree with the original sentiment, though. My high school friends were mostly married at 23-24 (give or take). My grad school friends, few of them are married, and those who are were about 27-29.

I''ll be married at 26, so I guess I''m somewhere in the middle. Interesting topic! In my experiences, age (unless you got pregnant and married at 19 or something) doesn''t have much to do with the divorce rate of the people I know.
 
I think there''s two different "averages" with my friends.

We''re generally seniors in college right now, and people are either:

a) getting engaged/married to their long-term SOs now, before grad school or starting jobs, and letting their future plans depend on each other (only going to grad programs close to each other, looking for jobs where their SO already got into school, looking for jobs together, etc, etc.)

-OR-

b) not even thinking about it. Knowing they have 4, 5, 6+ years of school left and definitely putting their academics first.
 
I thought I''d put a military opinion in here.

SO and his friends who graduated from various military colleges almost 3 years ago now are all over the place - enjoying the single life, in committed relationships, or got married the WEEKEND AFTER graduation. Dont ask me if its a going away on deployment mindset, if the romantic aspect of LDR relationships with military flare thrown in gets people eager to get married, or if the higher housing pay and deployment allowance attract the wrong kind of spouse. All I know is I''m in that kind of relationship and I think its a little crazy - we''re not all like that. Just like you can tell when couples not involved in LDR or military relationships get engaged a little too early you can tell when military weddings are somewhat awkwardly rushed. The hard thing is that people assume if you can get through a LDR you can get through anything but thats not the case - if youre independent an LDR can be more ideal than living with a SO.

Now that I think about it most of my circles of friends are all over the place. I dont think we''re all getting engaged in once circle and everyone is casually dating in another. Its kind of a good mix.
 
My work friends who are married are 26-30. A lot of my classmates in grad school are married, but their average age is older than a typical program.
My mom got married at 23, however, their marriage ended. She claims she was too young, but I know she married the wrong guy (my dad)
When I get married, I''ll be 25 (next Oct) I''ll be close to graduating in my program (in December). FF will be 26.
 
My friends and I are the kinda the opposite. I am 24 and many of my age-related friends and cousins are married or engaged.

I''m in a masters program, and three of my close school friends (ages 23, 24 and 25) are engaged/married. I have another friend (24) who is finishing up law school and got married in October, and another (24) who is getting a masters in english and is expecting an ering before christmas. I, myself (24), am expecting one this fall.

My cousin is getting her masters in education and just got engaged in November. And my other cousin (24) is getting married in September, and I get to be a BM!

But yeah, I don''t understand why all the people in my circle are going to school, working towards a career, and getting engaged/married now. Seems/is stressful!
 
The majority of my college friends got married in their early 30''s. I think one got married at 27 or 28, but she was really the exception.
 
i'm 25 and my so is 26...we'll be married when we're 26 and 27.

out of my group of friends, i only have a handful of friends that are already married and very few are actually in serious relationships. the last few weddings i've been to, the marrying age ranged from 23 to 33.

all that being said, most of my friends will get married in their early 30s.
 
I am from a small town where a lot of people get married young (not that there''s anything wrong with that!). My best friend is 21 and married with a baby. This is pretty common. I have another friend who married at 19. Both are very happy. Generally, a year or two after high school I have seen a lot of engagements. Not for me though! SO and I started dating in high school but probably won''t be married until at least our 6th dating anniversary.
 
a lot of girls I know from HS got married in their early to mid 20's. Now they are having tons of kids!
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(I'm 26 now, SO is 27) Of college friends, one got married at 23, but most others who have, married in the last year 25-26+ or are just getting engaged around now. I'd say on average, most will be closer to 28-30+ when they marry. Many are focused on school or careers, and a lot of people aren't even dating seriously. (many are frustrated with the dating scene!) I don't personally feel a rush to get married because I don't want kids, but I think if I did, I would be a little more anxious about timing because of fertility issues. My brother has a handful of friends that are married now, and they were mostly 26-28ish, but I would still say the vast majority of folks are still single.
 
Date: 3/17/2009 2:52:20 PM
Author:IrishEyes08
Most of my friends married in their late 20''s, early 30''s. I remember reading somewhere that people who have graduate degrees, live in urban areas and are ''professionals'' generally focus on their career and education moreso than dating and settling down in their 20''s and typically marry and start families later. Myself and many of my friends fall into these categories which I guess would be why everyone waited a bit to settle down.

How about you girls? What do you think the average age for your married friends and family have been?
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It''s varied with the people I know. But I''m much like you in the sense that we want our professional careers to be set in place first. I''m there now as far as my career, he''s working on getting there (if he would just get hired already) and we are both 27...
 
Most of my close girlfriends (27-ish) are still single and none of us still live in the city in which we grew up. I know that many of my classmates who did stay in our hometown are now married with babies which is somewhat odd because it''s not a small city by any means (90k+ ppl). The same goes with my FI''s friends and he grew up in a town of 1200 but went to a high school with 2000 ppl.

With that said, we are attending 7 weddings this year, so I can only assume that the numbers will continue to increase in the next few years. A couple of years ago, I always remember my bosses (who were in their early 30s) talking about how they had a wedding to attend every weekend in the summer...soon that will be me!
 
I'm 25 and getting married this year. Out of friends my age, only 3 others are married and one engaged, so we're definitely in the minority. All of us met our SOs in college (or high school, for one couple), while most people I know did not carry on any relationships from college. I see this as the key difference in age of marriage; if I hadn't met FI in college, I'm absolutely sure I wouldn't be marrying at 25. Since only one person is even engaged really, I would say the average age will be late 20s and early 30s.

I also have many friends already in their early 30s and almost all are married or in very serious relationships. They mostly married in their late 20s after grad school, though a few aren't married yet.

ETA: When it comes to family, most married young. My dad's side of the family is from a very very rural part of northern Michigan and the trend there is to marry and have kids at least by 25, if not earlier (many had kids at 18). On my mom's side of the family there aren't any kids because my uncles still aren't married at the age of 50. Sooo ... I have both extremes. Haha.
 
I think SO and I will be right where most people in our fields get married. He is 28 and I am 26 and we will be getting married in 2 years. He has been working for a couple years now and I am still in my PhD program. By the time we are married, we will both have grad degrees. What is weird is that his non-law school male friends don''t even have girlfriends and they are his age. His friends are a bunch of nerds, but SO and I are too and we found each other!
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I will be one of the first of my friends to get engaged but maybe not married since we will have a somewhat long engagement.
 
Interesting topic! This is something I''ve thought of pretty often. For my family and friends, early to mid-twenties seems the norm (right after college). I''m a late bloomer compared to everyone else bc K and I are 25 but we''re not engaged yet and we''ll probably be married at 26-27. But we have major student loans, so money has been the main culprit. Otherwise we''d already be married!
 
My cousins certainly don''t really fit into any average. We are spread out 13 years and one of us got married at 22. Another will be married at 26 and I will be married just after my 28th birthday. The remaining singles are turning 39 and 29 this year. One the other side one just got married last year at 35 and his sister got married at around 28/29.

Out of my close friends two will be married at 25 and another got married just before her 27th birthday.

Well I guess after thinking about it the people around me get married in their mid-late twenties with a couple of exceptions.
 
Date: 3/17/2009 3:27:18 PM
Author: SailorsSweet<3
I thought I''d put a military opinion in here.

SO and his friends who graduated from various military colleges almost 3 years ago now are all over the place - enjoying the single life, in committed relationships, or got married the WEEKEND AFTER graduation. Dont ask me if its a going away on deployment mindset, if the romantic aspect of LDR relationships with military flare thrown in gets people eager to get married, or if the higher housing pay and deployment allowance attract the wrong kind of spouse. All I know is I''m in that kind of relationship and I think its a little crazy - we''re not all like that. Just like you can tell when couples not involved in LDR or military relationships get engaged a little too early you can tell when military weddings are somewhat awkwardly rushed. The hard thing is that people assume if you can get through a LDR you can get through anything but thats not the case - if youre independent an LDR can be more ideal than living with a SO.

Now that I think about it most of my circles of friends are all over the place. I dont think we''re all getting engaged in once circle and everyone is casually dating in another. Its kind of a good mix.
Click to expand...
my bro is military, he married his sweetie after graduation in 2005... he was 23 at the time. They are still married. His other military friends married around the same ages.

Me and my friends waited considerably longer. Out of my closest friends I am the only one married... and my friends are late 20''s early 30''s.
 
Most of my friends (from high school) were married at 25-26 years old. There was a whole slew of weddings during that time. I''m going to be 29 when I get married (in 4 months...eek!) and that is a little old for my friends.
 
My high school and college friends mostly got married before 25. B''s friends are waiting until their early 30s. Which means...lots of weddings to go to last year/this year.
 
We'll be 27. I will have my BA and he will have his MA

FI has friends that got married at 22 (working on MA) and 20 (working on BA), another couple that got married at 30(BA and PhD student), and another at 25(MA) and 27 (high school grad), and I have friends that got married at 23 (college dropout) and 30 (college dropout).

So I think it's kind of all over the place...
 
Date: 3/17/2009 4:44:08 PM
Author: sammyj
With that said, we are attending 7 weddings this year, so I can only assume that the numbers will continue to increase in the next few years. A couple of years ago, I always remember my bosses (who were in their early 30s) talking about how they had a wedding to attend every weekend in the summer...soon that will be me!
Click to expand...
OMG sammy!!! And there are only around 9 months left in the year!!! Are the weddings close together?
 
From 30 to 35, with most being around 33.

London is just too expensive to even think of getting married before 30.... or at least in my peer group where people want to own a house and have financial ducks in a row first.
 
I only have 2 close friends who have gotten married...one at 21 and one at 23. Another is engaged and planning to be married at 26. Kris'' friends on the other hand are mostly married, but he''s a few years older. I''d say average age for his friends was 27-28? Maybe a little younger.

We''ll probably be 26 and 32 when we get married.
 
most of my friends got married within the 20-25 age range

im 22 and my FI is 24 and we''re getting married this june...

when it comes to our family its more like 22-27 age range
 
The average is probably between 28 and 35 for us. Most of our friends have at least one graduate degree, so your theory sounds about right in our case.
 
I''m 27, FI is 30. Very few of my high school and college friends are married (one HS friend got married last summer, and one college friend married right after graduation and has since been divorced). Two other college friends got engaged around the time I did, and are getting married within a few months of me. A former co-worker who I''m good friends with got married about six months ago. The rest are either in the "starting to think about it" phase, or aren''t thinking about it at all.

A lot of FI''s friends/now our mutual friends are married, one or two couples are getting close, and the rest are the farthest thing from it. The married ones were all in their mid-late 20s or very early 30s when they got married, and are now all starting to have kids...FI says he feels like a late bloomer
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Date: 3/17/2009 2:52:20 PM
Author:IrishEyes08
Most of my friends married in their late 20''s, early 30''s. I remember reading somewhere that people who have graduate degrees, live in urban areas and are ''professionals'' generally focus on their career and education moreso than dating and settling down in their 20''s and typically marry and start families later. Myself and many of my friends fall into these categories which I guess would be why everyone waited a bit to settle down.

How about you girls? What do you think the average age for your married friends and family have been?
Click to expand...
I guess that makes sense in theory but I''m one of those people who don''t really see how marriage can be an obstacle to a successful career. I''m 24, I do have a graduate degree, I was born and raised in the capital city of my country and I have a pretty solid career. And I got married at 21. At the time I was still in school. I am now the general manager of the company I work for. Same with my DH who is the same age as me and is also a very successful professional today.
In other words-we have the best of both worlds and one doesn''t really hamper the other. I don''t plan on having kids anytime soon though (for at least another 4-5 years) since that may very well turn out to be an obstacle to my career. Breast feeding and conducting a business meeting at the same time may be considered weird by some not so open-minded people.
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To answer your question, we''re the only married couple among our friends. I guess we''re the exception that proves the rule.
 
I''ll be finishing my MS this winter and will be getting married the following winter (2010). I''ll be 28. FI will be 33. In our group, with exception to one couple, the trend is pretty much school then marriage.
 
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