So you fancy a uni wedding?

Megan C. Hills on ‘getting hitched’ at university.

I remember my course induction at university, where a good four hundred students were herded like cattle into a lecture theatre at Ramphal building. There was a man who greeted us with a half-hearted smile before directing our attention to everyone else sitting around us.

“Look around you. You could be sitting in the same room as your future husband or wife.”

When you’re in your first week at university, that seems ridiculous. In reality, 10% of all Warwick graduates will marry someone that they met here. If you scroll through the Warwick Weddings webpage, you’ll find story upon story about how people met each other during Freshers or at the long-retired Top Banana SU night, and in a couple of cases even just on the way to lectures.

I’m graduating this year and there’s been some twittering in our ranks about what’s going to happen to couples in our year once we leave university. Who’s going to break up with who? Who’s going to get engaged? Who’s going to move in together?

Regardless of what any of those answers might be, I personally don’t think it’s a good idea for anyone to get married straight out of university. Everything is laced with uncertainty, job applications and CVs. You’re going to move into new jobs and new environments, you’ll be surrounded by new people and there’s going to be much more demanded of you. There’s no knowing how that will change you (or if it will even change you) but it seems like a mistake to marry someone when you’re both at such a crucial transitional stage in your life.

10% of all Warwick graduates will marry someone that they met here

By all means, continue dating and being generally in love. I’m not saying that you should never get married, but rather that you should allow each other the chance to explore the nooks and crannies of your own lives. When you marry someone, you’ll have to make concessions in order to orbit around each other and it’s not fair to either of you at such a young age. Let yourself change and be changed by everything around you; sometimes it’ll be for the worst but know that sometimes it’ll be for the best, even if it means that you start spinning in different directions. If you’re still together after a year out of university when you’ve both learned what it actually means to be a working adult, maybe then you can talk about getting married. Don’t feel like you have to rush into anything though, you’re only in your twenties.