Browsing for a necklace to match her wedding dress two years ago, Natalie Kelly, then a College sophomore, wandered through the packed stalls of Locust Walk during Family Weekend, she recalls.
“My dress is taffeta,” Kelly told a jewelry seller, craning to see what she had to offer. Her thoughts were interrupted by an unprovoked question.
“You’re getting married?” heckled a nearby student.
Kelly, unashamed of her decision, answered yes.
“Well, are you a senior?”
“No. I’m a sophomore,” Kelly coolly replied.
She continued to search for the perfect necklace, unperturbed.
Now a senior, she still recounts the anecdote with disbelief: “[The vendor] was just so appalled that I was getting married. I just kept thinking, ‘Who are you?’” Kelly, who has been happily married for over a year now, certainly realizes that her decision was outside the norm — especially at Penn.
The Utah native feels that her early engagement would not have caused such a hubbub in her home state, where marriage is more common among college-aged students. In fact, Utah has the lowest average age at first marriage, a statistic that can be explained in part by the significant Mormon population that lives there. At Penn, though, many students are occupied with classes, extracurriculars and keggers and most certainly don’t have marriage on their agendas. They view college as a time for playing the field and sexual experimentation, and can’t picture themselves in a white dress or tuxedo for years to come.
According to the most recent United States census, the average age at which men marry is 28. For women, the age is 26. That’s at least four years after most people complete their undergraduate degrees. But the few who have made the unconventional choice can cite a laundry list of reasons why getting married while still in college was right for them, not the least of which is strong religious convictions.
Kelly is a Mormon. She says her faith emphasizes that marriage, aside from a strong belief in God, is the most important foundation for a life that complies with the principles and practices of Mormonism. What’s more, the importance of marriage is ingrained in Mormon children from a young age so that they are prepared to think seriously about marriage whenever they meet a potential partner. “Growing up, I can’t even tell you how many times a church activity involved me making a list of all the qualities I wanted to see in my future husband,” Kelly said. “Your whole life it’s drilled into you [that you should] know what kind of person you want to marry.”
This “checklist” is intended to help young Mormons recognize when the right person finally comes along. Without religion, Kelly said, people may find themselves in long-term relationships, and on the verge of graduating, with no idea whether the person they’re dating is the one they should marry. Having criteria in mind also gives young Mormon men and women confidence in their decision to tie the knot, even when many of their non-religious peers are far from considering marriage.
For Lauren Pearce, C’08, who got engaged to Kenny Pearce, C’07, on her 21st birthday and married him soon after her graduation this past spring, a variety of reasons were at play. Their Christian beliefs were certainly a factor, but their decision was also logistically sensible, she said. Having discussed their willingness to sacrifice future career plans for each other to a certain extent, the couple, both of whom are currently in Ph.D. programs in Los Angeles, believed “it was only natural to get married,” Lauren said. “We both turned down opportunities for study elsewhere, and you wouldn’t want to do that for someone who hadn’t made a lifelong commitment to you.” Aside from only having to search for one apartment rather than two once they arrived in their new hometown, being married made their cross-country road trip easier and cheaper. “We only needed one hotel room a night!” she said.
Kelly didn’t let her run-in on Locust Walk discourage her, but other couples that might otherwise marry young say they let pressure from society get in the way of a choice that should be highly personal. Rabbi Levi Haskelevich of Penn’s Lubavitch House, an Orthodox Jewish community on campus, said he recently met with a Jewish couple who feared the scrutiny of their peers so much that they ended up postponing their marriage.
“I’ve definitely spoken to undergraduates who would get married if they weren’t concerned about the way people would view them,” he said. “They’re at that point in their relationship where they’re both ready to get married, and their parents are supportive, but they’re just worried about the way it’s viewed.”
Like Mormons, some Orthodox Jews marry young, and first meetings among highly traditional members of the faith are sometimes arranged by matchmakers. The dating process is seen as an opportunity to test compatibility and rarely involves physical contact — and never sex. If two people do hit it off, both their courtships and their engagements tend to be much shorter than they would be in the secular world. But dating habits among religious Jews, especially on Penn’s campus, are varied — not all marriages among Orthodox undergraduates are necessarily arranged, nor do all highly religious Jews tie the knot at an age that others might consider young.
Some students, regardless of religion, feel that they have met their life partner at Penn, but understand that college might not be the best environment in which to marry, if only because young marriage breaks the norm and is therefore subject to judgment. Nursing senior Zachary Ferris is engaged to fellow Nursing senior Margie Knowles. They have been together for just over a year and a half but don’t plan to wed until August of next year. Knowles said she just “wouldn’t feel comfortable” making that kind of commitment while still an undergraduate.
Even though they are waiting to marry until after graduation, their engagement still provoked mixed reactions. Knowles’s parents, who themselves didn’t marry until they were 35, “needed time to get used to the idea,” she said. The couple said they also encountered a variety of negative reactions from neighbors and friends, some of whom told them they thought they were crazy.
Similarly, Kelly said that when she went to the registrar to change her maiden name of Hamilton to her new married name, it took a lot of convincing. According to Kelly, the registrar encouraged her to hyphenate her name instead of completely changing it “because it’s easier to drop the Kelly just in case something happens.” She speculates that she met this difficulty because of her age — people have doubts about college students’ abilities to sustain a marriage.
The Pearces, on the other hand, say that their family and friends were “almost universally supportive.” While they admit that their Christian friends, who could relate to their decision better, were especially excited, Lauren recalls that her other friends “understood and respected the beliefs we had, and so were supportive that we had chosen to live out those beliefs.” And since both come from rural areas, where people tend to marry younger, they were not even the first from their high school classes to reach the altar.
For Ferris, who is a Christian, his faith in God is a key component in his relationship with Knowles. He says he has never depended on a checklist to find the perfect girl, but instead turned to a pastor — the one who will preside over his marriage next August — for advice before asking Knowles out for the first time. The pastor shared some wise words with Ferris, words that led him to propose a mere year and a half later. “It’s not about finding somebody who meets all the criteria,” Ferris remembers the pastor telling him. “It’s about finding someone who God sent to teach you how to love.”
Kelly noted that all of the young married people she knows are religious. Observant members of many faiths, including Mormonism, do not live together or have sex before marriage, leading some to wonder if marriage in religious communities all comes down to a physical urge. “Many people who aren’t religious don’t live like we do before they get married, so I can see why it would be hard for them to see why they should,” Kelly said, adding that people often ask her whether she got married so that she could have sex. Her answer, of course, is that there were many reasons behind her decision, one being that she just happened to meet the man she wanted to spend her life with.
“People who differ from us in their religious or moral beliefs often enjoy many of the benefits we wanted from marriage without making that kind of commitment,” said Lauren Pearce. “We don’t think that’s right.” One benefit is undoubtedly sex — which she admits was a motivation — but others include the ability to live and travel together.
While marriage does open up the possibility of sexual contact between two people, the decision to marry young clearly runs much deeper among religious couples. Ferris says he believes that God brought him and his fiancée together. “I don’t throw that around lightly,” he added. Both he and Knowles believe that God opens and closes doors for them in their lives, and as a result, “if we were to find out in a couple of months that this is not working out, then we would accept that,” Ferris said. “We’re still open to that possibility, even now that we’re engaged.” But, he said, if someone better than Knowles did come along, it would probably “melt his face off.”
Moreover, in many religious communities, marriage is a rite of passage that is spiritually significant. According to Haskelevich, the bond of marriage in Judaism is more than just a social contract between two people. “A marriage is letting God into your relationship,” he said.
Kelly explained that a marriage in the Mormon Temple is called a Sealing. It is considered more lasting than weddings performed elsewhere, since Mormons believe in “eternal families,” the idea that even death does not remove people from their loved ones. In Mormonism, two people are believed to remain married eternally, which is why the Sealing represents the beginning of a relationship that outlasts the more traditional “until death do us part.” The ceremony is regarded by members of the community as highly sacred, and only Mormons who have fulfilled their religious obligations and are in good standing with the church may attend.
Many young couples who are not religious, and therefore do not factor God into the equation, view marriage differently. Kelly said she understands that for some couples the choice is very clear, even without the guidance of faith. “When it’s harder to imagine your life without a person than with them, then you know they’re the one you’re supposed to be with,” she said.
