Brides ARE getting older... first-time bride is now 30
. i always thought that lady gabriella and lord frederick would marry blue blood, but frederick married an actress and maybe lady gabriella will never marry.
The typical first-time bride is now 30, the Office of National Statistics reported this week, confirming a trend few of us had failed to notice.
Brides are getting older – even in royal circles . . . . . Lady Gabriella Windsor, daughter of Prince Michael of Kent is 30 this month and not even engaged.
I got to the church on time... - Telegraph
By
Anna Tyzack 6:00AM BST 01 Apr 2011
The typical first-time bride is now 30, the Office of National Statistics reported this week, confirming a trend few of us had failed to notice. Brides
are getting older – even in royal circles: Kate Middleton will be 29 when she marries Prince William this month – almost a decade older than Lady Diana Spencer when she married Prince Charles in 1981.
Princess Anne was 23 at her 1973 nuptials to Captain Mark Phillips but their daughter Zara will be 30 when she ties the knot with England rugby player Mike Tindall in July. Lady Gabriella Windsor, daughter of Prince Michael of Kent is 30 this month and not even engaged.
I don't remember thinking "Help, I'm not married yet" when my 30th birthday was looming large. But I clearly had some subconscious qualms about it because when my boyfriend proposed last July I found myself, somewhat irrationally, desperate to get married before I entered my fourth decade. My parents tried to persuade me that the garden at our family home would provide a stunning backdrop for a summer wedding but I opted to walk down the aisle in February aged 29 and 10 months.
It was ridiculous, and I'm embarrassed to admit it. My husband couldn't care less whether he married a girl in her twenties or thirties. Now we're back from honeymoon, I've still got to face turning 30 next Wednesday.
But I know that many women my age feel under pressure to be married by 30. My friend Helen is sneaking her wedding in nine days before her 30th. "When I was younger I thought I'd be married with kids by the time I was 25,'' she says.
Another friend turns 30 in a month with no fiancé in sight and feels a failure. ''Growing up I always had a timeline in my head. By 30 I was meant to be married with at least one child,'' she tells me.I think our mothers are partly to blame for making us terrified about ending up as geriatric thirtysomething brides. The average bride in the Seventies was in her early twenties – my mother was 22. I grew up assuming that I'd marry young like her – probably straight after university. I liked the idea of marrying in my twenties and having time to enjoy life as a couple before starting a family in my thirties. That's what my parents did. They'd been married eight years when I was born.
But by the time I was 21 and half way through my degree, I'd changed my mind. In fact, I found it astonishing that my mother felt ready to get married at such a tender age. I couldn't have contemplated such a commitment; nothing in my life had fallen into place. I remember being terrified when a friend who'd graduated the year before me, announced she was engaged, at 21.
Along with most of my female friends, I spent my twenties getting my career on track and having fun. Even if I had been on the hunt for a husband I'd have struggled. Any normal boy I met was even less up for marriage than I was. My male friends still refer to proposing as "pulling the trigger". In fact, remove the bodyclock factor – doctors encourage us to try for children before 35 to avoid declining fertility – and I'm sure the typical bride would be a good deal older than 30.
"But if you care about getting married before having children, which I do, and you want more than one child then you do the maths and work out that you really need to get married preferably before you're 30," says my friend Helen.
She's right. But it doesn't leave much time to establish your marriage and enjoy being a couple without the stress of children. Perhaps, though, that is the price women and men must pay for doing our own thing and getting our lives sorted in our twenties.
Award-winning material.
