"Getting married at 21 sounds a lot like leaving the party at 9:30 p.m."

You're right. Getting married at 21 is like leaving the party before it even starts. It's like leaving the wild, crazy night to go home and be boring. But... it's like leaving the party to drive home to your house and change out of your uncomfortable party clothes into your pajamas. It's like leaving the chaos to come home in the quiet and turn on your favorite TV show. It's like trading in your uncomfortable shoes for a warm couch and blanket. Then, instead of ending the night alone or with some stranger you've never met, you get to go to sleep next to the one person you love and trust most in this world.

Since getting engaged at the age of 21 I've heard a lot of things. "You're too young to get married," "How will you all support yourselves?" and "I'm so glad I'm not getting married right now." All of these remarks come back to our age. We live in a culture now where it's looked down upon to get married young. It's seen as setting yourself and your marriage up to fail. And it's seen as "leaving" the best times of your life to go get married and settled down. We're just "too young for that."

But I'm here to say that what's right for you may not be what's right for me. What's right for you might be to spend the first half of your 20s being young and single, figuring it out on your own and coming into yourself. That's not right for me. Because I've done a lot of that already. I've been young and single, figuring it out on my own, and I feel like I've come into myself a lot in the past couple of years. And while I understand that I still have a lot of growing left to do, guess what? I get to do that with my very best friend in the world by my side. I get to do that holding the hand of my greatest supporter and comfort.

That's not to say that what's right for me is what's right for everyone. Some people don't want to be married right now and that's okay. But there's no reason to disrespect me or my decisions simply because you wouldn't want to make them yourself. It's important to realize that we are all different and we all want and need different things. My being married at 22 has no effect on you not being married at 22. What's right for me is right for me and I'm not asking you to agree with me, I'm just asking you to respect me.

So while you look at my marriage as leaving the party, I look at it as getting the party started. While you look at it as something you could never do, I look at it as the only thing I want to do. And even though you don't understand it or agree with me, I'm not asking you to do either. I'm just asking for you to respect that this is what works for me.