Age Is Just a Number

In today’s day and age, the average age an American woman gets married is 27. I am a few short days from turning 35. Cute the freak-out.

I totally stole this one from Mrs. Pyramid. | GIF via Giphy

Eh, I’m just kidding. I don’t really care that much about turning 35. I just wanted an excuse to use the GIF.

By averages, I am kind of an older bride. (Although, of course by no means am I old. There are lots of other first-time brides the same age or older than me.) When I was 20, an influential friend (who was quite a bit older) told me to never get married before I was 30. She had gotten married young, and I think she regretted it. This resonated with me, and from then on I always knew that I wanted to wait for marriage.

I didn’t meet Mr. BC until I was 27, so the marriage-by-30 thing kinda happened by default.

So here are some random ponderings about being an older bride: the good, the bad, and…well, that’s it!

Family pressure: Luckily, we never got any pressure from our families to get married. We got engaged at 33, and prior to that both sets of parents pretty much left us alone.

Despite us being older, ours will be the first kid wedding for both sets of our parents. I’m the youngest, and Mr. BC is the oldest. All of our siblings are in long term relationships, but nobody else has made it down the aisle yet.

Though we’re the first of our siblings to get married, we’re almost the last in our circle of friends to get married. In fact, most of our friends are starting to have babies.

For me, it’s nice to get married a bit older because we both have dated and had life experiences on our own, and now we’re building our life together.

A downside to marrying a bit older is that it makes me sad to think that we may not get a 50th wedding anniversary. We’ll both have to make it to 85 years old, which is possible…but that’s getting up there in years.

What’s interesting is that no matter how old you are, I feel like brides’ experiences are all pretty similar. I’m a good 10 years older than Mrs. Milk Cow, but she is absolutely my best resource during this wedding planning journey. Nobody else understands the excitement, drama, stress, and general wedding planning process like another bride who’s going through it with you. So in that way, I feel like all brides are ageless.

Are you up for a little more Weddingbee reading on young-ish/old-ish brides? Mrs. Star wrote an excellent series of posts about her experience as a young-ish bride. And Mrs. Swan wrote up her experience being an “older” bride.

Hive, how old were you / will you be on your wedding day? Do you think age is just a number, or did you wait for a specific age before you wed? Did you get any family pressure…either to wait longer, or hurry up and do the deed?

• featured
• punta cana

Miss Border Collie

Related Posts

Trash the Dress & Wedding Regret

We Took Engagement Pictures, but Now I Don’t Like Them…

Pop of Color: A Groom’s Perspective

Saying Yes to the Dress: The Conclusion