The Garden Wedding

My wife and I were featured on today’s Zaobao Fukan front page along with another 2 couples. It was a feature story on couples who married soon after graduation. There were a couple of mistakes in the article though, the most obvious one being my wife’s stipend being $1,500 to $2,000 weekly instead of monthly. I think it’s probably an honest mistake on the part of the reporter because it probably would have made no sense to anyone if the stipend is given weekly. Anyway, here’s the report:

Click on picture to enlarge
Reading about the other 2 couples, I suppose that young couples really have it tough. Money aside, people often wonder why the choice to get married so early. Some people might even think that it’s a shotgun marriage rather than a planned one. I suppose this are the consequences to face when you do things that are out of the norm.

I think the other two couples made two very good points which myself and Peiying agrees to wholeheartedly as well. The first is that life is unpredictable, and if we wait, we might never get the chance (touch wood but you never know). Secondly, family before career is something that we feel is important because the warmth of a family helps to provide a strong emotional support to ride through the rough waves of establishing a career.

I suppose not everyone agrees with such lines of thought but well, I think marrying early is really important because marrying late means that you will rush to have kids due to the biological clock ticking away. I think it’s better to enjoy a few years as husband and wife, understanding each other before the kids come because kids will definitely place additional stress on the family. It is important to have an emotionally strong bond between husband and wife before the kids come along, and for the strong emotional bond to happen, you need time to nurture it. So, if you are thinking about marriage, don’t wait!