Hi everyone!!
I will begin my Ph.D. program in January (hopefully!), and I've been engaged since June of this year. My fiance and I originally planned for a June 2011 wedding, but moved it for financial reasons. So now the date is June 2012, which would be like a year and a half of the program. I was talking to my aunt the other day and I was telling her when I planned to marry. She begged me not to marry until I finished school because being married is apparently hard...(?) Now I'm not saying that marriage is an easy road, but I just don't agree with waiting until I receive a Ph.D. to marry my fiance. He's a strong advocate of my education, so he's not a distraction.
So I guess my question is when are you getting married, and if you're getting married during your program, how do you think it will affect you?
Re: To all my Ph.D. students...
I also wanted to ask how were your transitions from undergrad to grad?
Side note: I realized that my aunt gave me the best advice she could bc she held off on her education because she married my uncle and was head over heels for him, which is why she's back in school now after like 20 yrs.
Marriage may not be easy, but I don't see why delaying it until graduation is supposed to help. If you guys are so rocky that waiting until you get a degree is the difference between making it and getting a divorce, then you have bigger issues. I'm not saying that's the case for you guys at all, but it seems to be what your aunt is saying. Sure, grad school adds stress, but so will having kids, buying a home, etc. There are bound to be times that test your marriage, so if you have good reason to get married now, I don't see the point in delaying it.
I am just finishing up my first quarter of my Psych PhD program. I have been with my fiance for 6 years (as of Dec 8th). We are both students and because he was in the hospital for awhile, he is behind me in school and wont get a career until much later, so there is no way we could support ourselves so we are waiting to get married. If you and your fiance can support yourselves without help from ur families then I see no reason not to get married during your program (just make sure that you actually do all your work).
I will not lie, although I just started, PhD programs are MUCH MUCH MUCH harder than any undergraduate classes. You are expected to do a lot more in a shorter amount of time. I have probably learned about a year's worth of undergraduate statistics in about 2 months. You will be very busy doing both studying for school and planning a wedding, but with help you will be able to do it all.
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I'm currently in a Ph.D. program and will be getting married in May 2011. I started working on my Ph.D. in the fall of '08, and am working on finishing in the fall of '12. Grad school is much different from undergrad, so just understand that there is much more work involved. They don't just hand out Ph.D's! However, I haven't found any conflict with wedding planning and going to school at the same time... but then again I guess that depends also on how much time you plan on putting in to your wedding. It sounds like you will be having a long engagement, which I did also. I think that's good, so you can work on wedding stuff when you have lulls in research.
My fiance is very supportive of my decision to get my Ph.D. He's also in grad school currently. I actually think things will get better once we're married... then we can stop all this long-distance craziness!
Good luck!
I will say it depends on you and your FI. If you think that your planning will interfere with your study schedule then set aside specific hours to focus on your wedding. It doesn't really take all day every day to plan a wedding. I try to work on my wedding stuff for a few hours on the weekend and then devote the rest of my time to studying. If you both really want to do it I say go for it. If you're not ready then wait. But figure out why you're really waiting and plan accordingly because those issues may or may not still be there when school is finished.