10
Wednesday, June 15, 1994
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Marriage: Matrimony matters less
Continued from Page 9.
by 1992, there were 868,000 unmarried heterosexual couples in which at least one of the pair was under the age of 25. The report also shows that 18- to 24-year-olds are twice as likely as baby boomers not to marry at all. About one-fourth of the 4 million baby busters will never marry, according to the bureau's studies.
For the millions of busters who suffered through their own parents' divorces and bad family lives and who are now feeling skittish about matrimony, living together is a more sensible way of testing the marital waters than it was for so many boomers.
Lara Sherrill, a 21-year-old Chicago senior, lives with her boyfriend in Kansas City, Mo., and says she thinks living together is a good test before marrying.
Commitments Though women still marry at a younger age, *path* sense is often defended commitment?
"Gary and I are both from broken homes, and we want to make sure that we don't continue the tradition of disposable marriages," she said. "We want to get married someday, but we want to make absolutely sure that it will be a lifetime commitment."
Sherrill said that she felt it was a commitment for couples to choose cohabitation but that the commitment was not as binding as marriage.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
"Most couple who live together already have some kind of a commitment," she said. "But living together and signing on the dotted line are twovery different things."
Dave Campbell / KANSAN
Psychologist O'Donoghue said that cohabitation often appeared to be a better choice for many baby busters.
"I think that what we're also finding is that it is a solution for the post-boomers to two conflicting needs: being in a relationship and being self-sufficient," she said. "For the post-boomers, cohabitation is marriage without the dependence."
However, busters do not shun dependence and family values.
"Unlike baby boomers, who frequently mocked marriage and parenthood, 20-something long for the romantic notions of a family life they never had," O'Donghue said. "They want a close family, maybe not as large as the Brady Bunch, but just as happy. But 20-something fear such closeness as much as they want it, which in part, explains why they are delaying marriage and parenthood. But they're getting there — gradually."
Nutty nuptials not the norm
It's all past June, and you've had it with throwing bridal showers, catching bouquets and eating white cake. If you hear one more band play "Celebration," you will stay single for life.
By Shella Norman-Culp The Associated Press
You, my weddinged-out friend, have been going to the wrong weddings.
Youprobably missed the ceremony where two Humane Society supporters walked down the aisle in Oregon with dogs as their flower girl and ring bearer. Or when an Alaskan member of the National Rifle Association exchanged semi-automatic pistols with his bride instead of rings.
In fact, offbeat weddings have become an American tradition. And though this is the favorite month for nuptials — about 252,000 couples married in June last year — any time seems the right time to, say, exchange vows under water.
There is only one rule among the wacky wedding crowd.
If you have thought of it, it has been done.
Last year, two runners stopped in the middle of the New York City Marathon to pledge their love as TV cameras rolled and sweaty competitors raced past.
Computer buffs have held on-line weddings where the bride and groom type in their vows as friends and family join the ceremony via home computers.
Romantic? Ridiculous? It depends on your point of view.
A bride walked down the aisle at 7-Eleven where she and her fiance were working when they met.
No study has been done to see if these couples stay together any more than the American average that now stands at a dismal 50 percent, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
Last year, an avalanche blocked a Colorado bride and groom from reaching their wedding site. While they went back to town to be married, their friends at the mountain inn drank champagne and ate wedding cake without them. Some wedding spectacles have involved pollution.
Inclement weather has produced an offbeat wedding sub-category: the we-could-not-get-there affair, courtesy of snowstorms, avalanches and hurricanes.
A bride in Kentucky went on a $1,500 shoplifting spree the morning of her wedding, gathering items that anyone would need—a dress for her, a suit for him and a video camera to film the event. The wedding was delayed a few hours while she posted bail.
Rest assured, however, truly heartwarming weddings still resinate above the din.
One pair of high school sweethearts eloped in 1927 at ages 14 and 16, but their parents annuralled the marriage. After 64 years apart, two marriages, children and other lives, they met up again after both were widowed and remarried a few months later.
"I thought of her often over the years," Paul Tarvin said on the eve of his second marriage to Nina Downs. "After all, she was my first love."
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