what's with the weddings?

Recently I started editing the alumni newsletter for my college graduating class (2004). This means that a couple of times a year, I get a big envelope full of news and miscellaneous crap about my school and all sorts of forms that my fellow classmates have filled in with info about themselves and what they're doing now. It's kind of fun because I went to a small school (about 500 people in my class) and so even though I wasn't close friends with everyone, I have a general idea of who most people are. People have the kind of jobs I would expect (Assistant Junior Executive for Acquisitions and Finance; a.k.a someone's bitch) but the surprising part is how many are engaged/married.

I'm surprised for two reasons: 1) the age of first marriage is on the rise. Most of the people I graduated with are no older than 24, notably below the median age at first marriage for college grads of 27 for women and a year or two older for men (I don't know why I can't find census data for this, the figure of 27 for women comes from Harvard researchers). 2) while I was in school it seemed like very few people were in relationships that were remotely serious. The random hookup model seemed to be going strong, so it's kind of impressive that all these people managed to find someone to marry within about a year of graduating. I always though I'd be one of the youngest to tie the knot, but people are beating me to it right and left.

I don't really have any wider social commentary on this, but I bet they won't be sending me updates on their divorces for the newsletter.