What's your opinion on when a couple should get married?

I don't think there's a right or wrong time. I know couples who married after weeks and are still together, and those who waited years and are divorced.

first time round I got engaged after 5 months and married after another 17. Divorced 2yrs later. In hindsight, I married with my heart not my head - there was no way we could be compatible after the initial romance and passion had faded, but I wanted it to work so badly. This time I've known OH for 7yrs and honestly can't say when we graduated from friends to partners, it just seemed to happen over the years rather than us make any conscious decision about it. I do know though, that having known him so long, and being friends first and above anything, we have a much better chance of success

I can only speak for myself but we'd been together 12 years before we got married. Buying our house first was more of a priority for us.

We've been together since we were 16 and engaged and pregnant at 18. There was no way we were getting married at that age and we were too young and not ready for it. We lived together at his mum's until we brought our own house at 23 and then we were married at 28. This worked for us but whose to say it would work for others?

Obvs it depends on the couple. Some people say that they knew straight away that their OH is the one, but in these situations, it still wouldn't hurt to wait a a year or so before getting wed.

I personally think it best to have been a together for a couple of years. My h2b waited 9 years to propose, when I was probably ready for marriage after 5 (before then I would have freaked out as I considered myself too young). When we get married, we will have been in a relationship for 10 happy years.

I would never look down on anyone who had a whirl-wind romance, I would wish them the best of luck!

I do not approve of couples who get married because the woman is pregnant if that is the only reason. All of the divorced people I know got married for this reason!

Generally my motto is, marry in haste, repent at leisure.

I think it depends on the couple, and I think its very hard to tell as an outsider whether it is the right time for a couple to marry. I've always thought that its important to get through the initial 'falling in love' stage and reach something that's deeper and more lasting, but I know there are many couples who marry before they reach this point and are perfectly happy. Some people know each other for a few months, get married and can make it work. It depends a lot on the couple involved and how committed they are to making the marriage last.

I think it depends on the couple..

I know two couples who got married at 17 to their first love and 28 yrs later are still together and going strong.

I married my ex husband after we had been together for 4 yrs, and we aplit up 18 months later.

This time round I have been with/lived with my partner for 3 years (but have known him 12)

We'd been together 3& a half years when he popped the question but i knew the day we met i wanted to marry him. sometimes you just know its right. its diffetent for everyone though isnt it? my friend says being in a relationship is hard work but i dont feel that way, being with my oh is easy peasy!

We are 25 and getting married at 26. We have been together since very young and gew up as best friends and bought a place together when we were 19, so have been living together for over 6 years now.

I would have said I was ready when we 1st moved out, but that was more to do with having a catholic upbringing, and the guilty feelings that i was having.

If you ask us now, I think we are just about ready.

More so in age. As I knew him very well a long time ago. But we have still changed quite a lot together.

We are definitly not the same people we were when we were 16

First time, I was 20 and he was 24. It was my first real relationship, I was very insecure and wanted to feel loved. We stayed married 2 years but it was never happy.

I have known Stu 18 months, we met online and chatted for about 2 months then went on a date. We fell in love within a matter of weeks, and I know he is the one for me, it feels right and I cant imagine my life without him. :-)

I think there is no right or wrong - when you feel it, you feel it and it doesnt matter how long you ahve been together as long as you have the butterflies in your tummy :-)

x

I completely agree that its down to the couple ..... there have been 3 engagement's in the office in 3 months...mine was first...ive been with my h2b 3 years before he proposed and living together wit our own mortgage 2 of those years...the other 2 couples have been with each other for a year and are getting married..... it really depends on how hard your willing to make it last...and whether you are compatible...i can honestly say me and my h2b have never had an argument...bickered slightly but never an argument...some say this is bad i say its because we talk about what's bothering us before it gets to the argument stage...i think the only people that know when its time to get married are the couple themselves...no one else knows what anyone else's relationship is like deep down.

xx

OH and I are getting married as we reached the point where we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. We are planning to buy a house next year and to us this is financially far more important than a wedding, but being married is very important to us, so we are having a small wedding. Not everyone would agree with our choice.

Some couples do say "oh we need to buy a house first" or "oh the children are so expensive" or something as a reason that they cannot afford to get married, and I think often that is not the whole story. The actual legalities of getting married, whether you chose a church or a civil ceremony are pretty cheap (our civil ceremony is just under £400, but in some register offices it would be half that). There is no requirement to buy new clothes, have a meal or entertainment, have a honeymoon or to invite anyone except two witnesses to the wedding, and you can always take those home and feed them toast at your kitchen table if you want to - you would still be married.

The real barrier is often that people want a big day and a big wedding. There is NOTHING wrong with that, it is each to their own, but it is something that seems to be creeping up and up, and so many people put the wedding off as they want to do it "properly" and are waiting for the time when they have the money. I have a friend in this exact situation who has been saving for years and is finally looking at getting married in a couple of years. It doesn't make her relationship any less committed, but I know she is sad that she has had to wait so long, and I only hope her dream day lives up to what she is hoping after all this planning!

I'm also of the opinion that it's all in the preference of the couple. The time is right when they feel it's right I guess? Me and my husband had been together for about 18 months before he proposed to me but we had been through so much. We also had children from previous relationships and wanted to be united as a proper family.

We had been together a year- we had been planning to get engaged after about 3 months of being together so it was on the cards. We diddnt actually live together untill after we were engaged...we dont own a house and wont be able to for at least 5 years.

The only real answer I can think of is that couples should get married when it dosnt make sense not too. Thats how we worked it out.

From a personal point of view, I could never marry someone that I 'hadn't tested the waters with' and someone that I hadn't lived with.

What if they were a messy so and so with a bad technique?

Lol at this - but also a very good bit of advise! @D

I don't think there is any real hard and fast rule, tbh.

Social, economic and religious factors can play a part, as can the age of either partner particularly if you are more mature in years and wish to start a family.

We were dating a year when we got engaged, then it'll be a year and two months more or less engagement on top of that before we are married in a few weeks time, so just over 2 years from first meet to married.

That worked for us. It may not suit other people.

I am sure it ranges for everyone but for me i don't think you really know someone unless you have lived with them. I also feel the first couple of years of a lot of relationships are very much the honeymoon period and it is really what is left between each other when that wears off a bit that is the key to if your relationship will work.

Who is to say though,i have been with my OH for 12 years but i would never be so conceited to say that i know 100% that this will work for life. I hope it does though.

I'd been with OH for 6 years by the time we got engaged, I would have preferred 3yrs but he wasn't ready.. it depends on the family background too, my family has a lot of short term relationships and single mums, nothing wrong with that but it's caused a lot of heartache and I was keen to make the commitment before we thought about having a family.

Whereas by contrast, my parents got married when they were 21, and think me and OH (31 and 34 respectively) are leaving it a bit late!!

I think there are so many different factors at play in life that I like to take the simple way out of questions like this and say 'when you know, you know' that'll mean different things to different people, but life would be boring if we were all the same!

We got engaged after 4 months i was 16 and my OH 18 (looking back it sounds sooo young) we will have been together 7 years and i will be nearly 23 when we get married.

weve lived together in our own house(renting) for 6 month but lived between both parents houses for the past 6 years. We were saving for a morgage but ended up renting whilst we carry on saving.

i had a car crash and got some compensation (still in pain now, from over a year ago) and its that were using towards the wedding with some help from family.

it shows that everyone is different

I don't make any judgements on other people's choices but for me, it was important to wait. I am of the opinion that: if I am going to be with someone for the rest of my life then what's the rush, I would want to live with them first to see how we get on and also check that we mature in the same way (rather than be compatible at the start and drift away down different paths). But that works for me and I recognise that for others it would work differently for different reasons.

I wonder whether there has been any research in to the the length of time before someone gets married and divorce / length of time married- whether there's a correlation. My guess is that there isn't although it is a common assumption that there is.

I think it depends on the couple to be honest my mam and dad got engaged after 5 months and they are still together 33 years later!

I knew from very early on that I would marry my OH but we didnt get engaged until we had been together 3 and half years and we are getting married when we have been together for 5 years! Its funny because we bought our first house together last June & had only been in it around 2-3 months when he proposed although he had a flat previously which I practically lived at all the time anyways for around a year or so before we bought ours!

Think OH finally realised I wouldnt have kids til we were married (yes im old fashioned that way - just cos thats how i was brought up not cos i disapprove).

Im 30 this year and its the first time for both of us and I just think we know all we are going to know about each other and we are at an age where we both feel settled!

I'm with Mooey on this one. I couldn't marry someone I havn't lived with or hadn't had 'experiences' with!

We would have been together 8 years by the time we get married and living together for almost 6 years. Living together definantly tests the relationship, especially whilst you're getting used to each others habits! Having children just tests it even more!

I agree with the majority that it totally depends on the couple. Im 26 and oh is 30 we have been together for 11years now, i think i was ready for him to propose after about 3 years (oh proposed last year) but to be honest we have been through alot over the last 5 years, including having 2 children and it has definately changed us and made us stronger but could have pulled us apart too. ?

I think it depends on the couple, but i'm not sure relationships can be built on proper ground if you rush into stuff. You need to know the person before you marry them. My MOH moved in with her ex within three months of getting together, and got engaged on their first anniversary. She soon found out he was a right kn0bhead and that he was awful to live with. He eventually cheated on her on their third anniversary and 6 months before they were due to get married. Now thats all his fault but i also think if she'd got to know him a lot better first she could probably have saved herself a lot of heart ache.

However, if you've been friends for years thats different i think, because you know them. I've know D for nearly 8 years. We've been together 4 and a half years. But we got engaged on our second anniversary, when we were both still at uni and tbh i wish we'd waited. We ended up splitting up for two months last summer, after months of problems because i felt pressured into marriage and he didn't think he loved me anymore. We're perfectly happy and doing well now, but i'm glad we waited or i reckon we'd be divorced by now. I now realise that even though we'd been together two years we didn't know each other as well then as we do now. plus we've sort of grown up and in to each other IYSWIM?

We will have been together 5 and a half years when we get married. I don't disagree with marriage quickly in a relationship after two or three years. But i think quicker than that is just a recipe for disaster.

My gorgeous Nan told me this... You should only get married if you Love for the right reason, can stand him for all the seasons and want it to last a life time. She's not only amazing but an inspiration :-) (mush on toast!!) for us it was when it felt right. I think this is true for everyone

MrsApplestobe thats lovely!

reminds me of something my english teacher said to me:

First flush of love is loving everything they do. True love is putting up with everything they do and loving them anyway.

I know you said 'these days' but I just want to point out that my mum and dad have been married for 35 years. They were married after 9 months of knowing each other.

I really do think that if you love someone and want to marry them, then it doesn't matter whether you've been together a week or 100 weeks. Love is unconditional. If you love him/her then you love everything about them - good and bad. So even if, in 2 years down the line, you find that he likes to collect toe nail clippings, it doesn't matter because the love you have for him is 100% completely unconditional.

Personally for us, we are very sensible and only act on our decisions once we feel that we have truly considered everything and ultimately 'know' what we're doing! We are very realistic but still madly in love! We have seen problems in other people's marriages, divorces etc and have learnt from other peoples mistakes in a way. Obviously we don't know what the future holds, but from going from friends to being a couple, being together for 7 years, having lived together on our own for 2 years, we feel that we are as prepared for marriage as we'll ever be and we're glad that we have had a test drive! We talked about marriage from Day 1 and have always known that we would get married, but commitment by marriage is exactly what it says on the tin and we wanted to be able to say when getting married that we were truly committing to each other for the rest of our lives.

We have seen couples that got married after only a few months and its worked great for them, others we still see have arguments over things that they signed up for when getting married which to me says that they should have got over it by now! haha! I have also seen couples get engaged when there's clearly no trust there and that's just silly. There's no right or wrong with regard to timing but I just think if you get married quite quickly you have to have the type of personality to deal with whatever life throws at you.

I may get flamed for this but my love for my H is not unconditional. If he cheats on me or hurts our daughter then he will out the door.

I think that, if pressed for an answer, most people would probably feel the same - they are forgiving for most things but there is a line beyond there is no return, such as the examples you mention.

I just hope I never catch my future wife whistling on a Tuesday - that's totally unforgiveable.

Ditto

Am not a mum myself but my understanding is that uncondtional love is generally reserved for children? I love MrMini immensley but if I found he had cheated or god forbid had committed some awful crime (im thinking murder, rape etc) then I think I could fall out of love pretty much as quick as I fell in it?

Is that a euphamism?!