A bride fixes her dress, perfecting her appearance before she walks the aisle towards the rest of her life. The groom adjusts his tie with a slight smile, anxious to see his wife-to-be. The day every girl dreams of, what’s considered the most magical moment in someone’s life, the official beginning to a future together. It couldn’t happen soon enough. Neither thought “soon” would be fresh out of high school.  Neither knew if it would last, and neither spared a thought about the work that goes into marriage.

“High school sweethearts” are just one example of kids who marry young. In today’s day and age, the average age for a bride to be is 26, according to “Brandon Gaille”. While many may look at their relationships and envy them, the sad truth is that most high school sweethearts who married in their teens have a little more than a 50% chance of staying married for up to a decade. Marriages that happen during their mid-twenties prove to have much more success. Almost 80% of them turn out successful.

Contrary to popular belief, however, divorce rates are decreasing. The rates are at a little less than 50% despite the drop. According to Abott and Abott P.C., the reason for this drop isn’t because people suddenly wish to be tied down to one person for the rest of their lives, it’s that not as many people are actually getting married in the first place.

The trend of popular opinions points to people not seeing the need to get married anymore. People are still able to have children and raise them with a partner, with or without a ring on their finger, but there’s always two sides to any argument. The other half believes that since the couple does not have any legal documents cementing their union, either party could leave the other, and with nothing or worse, a child. There’s nothing set in place to divvy up the money, possessions, or custody of children if they choose to leave the relationship.

A plethora of cons come to mind when young marriage is brought up. Financial stability is a huge topic of discussion. According to “Young Adult Money”, 57% of young adults stress about their finances. In fact, almost 50% say that money is their top cause of stress.

All in all, love is like learning a new language. Some people get the gist of it on the first few tries and other’s flounder and fumble through the sentences, forming incoherent strings of sounds to those who speak it fluently. For both love and learning a new language, some start early, others wait, and many never venture out. In this day and age, marriage is no longer traditional nor is it necessarily a must in many people’s eyes. Dreaming about marriage has proven very different from actual marriage.