Like WDWAurora, we don't believe in living with each other before marriage and if I am to be completely honest, I do believe that is part of the pull. I would never marry someone only for that reason, however!
Both of my parents were older when they were married (over 30) and I do think they see me sometimes as my gangly, preteen self with braces and hair in pigtails.
Glad you're honest with yourself enough to admit that (about marriage's allure being the living together part). My stepdad (hmm...husband to whom my mom was married when she died...is he still a stepdad?) married a woman he had only known 3 years, met her after my mom died in "singles" bible study class (vs "couples", it wasn't a dating type of class, just so that people didn't feel lonely when they weren't a couple), and I know very well that a big reason for the fast marriage (2 months after becoming engaged, 10 days before the 3rd anniversary of my mom's death) was so that they could be together. How do I know? Because it's why he married my mom almost instantly! Buncha older teenagers, I swear....
Oh, and I would bet that your parents see you as a baby, not as a teen.
I had DS at 34, and while I didn't wait to marry (DH and I only met when I was about to turn 31, got engaged in 4 months, got married when I was 33) on purpose, the thought of my 22 year old self marrying one of the 22 year olds that I was dating back then....makes me laugh hysterically, get nauseated, and wipe my brow with a sigh of relief that no one lost their minds back then.
Does it seem like you're dating someone as idiotic as I was? Nope. But it's the feeling that goes through me when I think of young 20-somethings marrying. One can't help personalizing it like that.
My mom and dad married when he was 17 and she was 19. They did NOT marry for the right reasons, but it was sanctioned by the parents. My mom wanted to leave the house after graduation, and her dad refused to let her go alone. So he and my dad had a meeting behind closed doors, and when they came out, she was engaged. And then they went across the country to San Francisco to be hippies (despite the archaic way it was decided for them to be married). They had me at 25, and even before then he had become abusive towards her. She had my brother, and 2 years later divorced him at last. So they were married for 12 years, but only about 7 years were good, and she knew it would be like that from the moment he stood her up for their FIRST date in high school!
My mom was, of course, very anxious for me to NOT marry young. And since I was on a very long, Freudian, "daddy-quest" while dating, it's good that I didn't! Like I said, one can't help but personalize it.
If you guys get married young, and if you guys make it, when YOUR kids express a desire to marry after 30, you will be just as confused about that decision as those who marry at 30 are about those who marry in their young 20s.
Changing the subject slightly, I think you can wait "too long". When DH and I married, we were ready to settle down . . . but we grew together. We weren't set in our ways yet. I think it might be more difficult for a person who'd be living on his or her own 'til 30 or 40 to adjust to living with another person.
I disagree.
While you might be used to being alone, and having your own space, if you are a marrying sort, you always sort of leave a mental space for someone else. You're wanting to meet that Someone, so you know that eventually things might change.
Plus, you probably have had many roommates! My roommates were always MUCH more disruptive to my household routine than DH has been. (he's the only man I've lived with on a non-roommate level)
And lastly, if you wait, you TRULY know yourself (well, except for those people who skip the self knowledge and insist on midlife crises), and can probably be honest with the people you are dating. Which then brings two people together without games, etc. Not that everyone plays games, but I think that if you don't marry your HS sweetheart and hit your 20s without someone, then games are being played on one or both sides, at least that's been my experience with my life and every one of my friends who hit that age without being coupled yet. But if you're 30 something (can't speak for 40 something b/c I'm married) you are probably more YOU than you were 10 years before, and there's something very very good about that.
Ha ha...my problem is that I went for a younger man! I was coming up on 31, and DH was only 28. He hadn't quite hit that stage yet. He thought he had, but he hadn't! The amount of growth I've seen in him between 28 and 38 has been incredible, while he would say that I'm about the same because I had already figured it all out by the time I met him.
I'm actually not putting allllll of this on others, I'm just blathering right now.
Plus, ideally our honeymoon destination is between the Seychelles, Galapagos and Micronesia. Neither one of these will be cheap so we'll need time to save up money, or careers that can support such a trip.
If you're looking at Micronesia, two people I know would urge you to consider Guam. Just as beautiful, MUCH cheaper. That argument did not sway me, I wanted to think about Hawaii and hubby urged me to research Guam (he'd been to both), but I could not be convinced. (ultimately we went to Alaska, LOL....just not tropical people!)
So true. When my parents got married in the late 1960's, they were 21 and 22 respectively. The maturity level of young adults back then was completely different compared to today. They (young adults) were much more mature then now.
OP, basically it all comes down to maturity level and if you are ready to head into a life long committment with all of its ups and downs.
*Do you both have an open communication with each other?
*Are both of you there to support each other no matter what?
*Can you get passed any hard times/difficulties together or just put your hands up and give up b/c it's the easiest thing to do?
*Do you each have complete trust in each other?
I like those points.
But from my parents' story, it wasn't the time that made people mature. (plus, everyone keeps saying that "kids THESE days are growing up too fast!" it can't be both ways, LOL) Sure, the clothes and hairstyles of the time made even young teens look like adults (I have this pic of my mom at 13, vavoom she looks 28!), and young marriage was more normal, but that didn't mean the emotional maturity was there, necessarily.
OP...when I heard that Kevin Jonas was marrying at 22, it bugged me. Like I've said, if I'd married at 22 it would have been a disaster. And in '08 I spent a "girls weekend" watching my friend (who married at 22) act in THE most immoral fashion, it was sickening and even disturbed our other friend who always had more loose morals (the other friend was *this* close to having an affair while newly married and only realizing she was pregnant stopped her, for instance). My friend who married at 22 seemed so incredibly mature back then. She and her now-husband met each other over the summer between freshman and sophomore years of college. They clicked from the start. She had dated extensively before, and felt that it was "time" to settle down (which depressed a constantly single girl like me!). So they married shortly after college graduation and started a perfect little life. And now she's continuing the "rule" she started in college, which was "what happens outside of the state we live in stays in the other state"...and that was before Vegas adopted that basic slogan.
And then...I remember that my brother and his wife married at 22. They'd both graduated from Duke (she had done so a year before him), and in that same month of his graduation he was commissioned into the Air Force and married. They are still disgustingly in love. But they knew themselves at VERY young ages. My brother has barely changed since he was 10. The only thing I can put my finger on is that he'll eat salad now, which never ever happened before...I think he started eating "green food" at 30. His wife, at a very young age, had her life mapped out, and it has gone even better than expected. They were old before they were old, and knew themselves enough to not lie to themselves or to others, and I think that's a big reason why it has worked out!
So I have anecdotes on ALL sides.
If you guys, and if your parents and his parents and your friends, truly feel that you are old beyond your years, if you are making good choices of partner, if you guys have thought about the BIG grownup life stuff (babies, no babies, pets, where to live, how to live, how to raise babies, have babies, feed babies, surgical procedure on one type of baby (seriously, those are big ones, might as well work it out now)), if you've *talked* about it...if you guys have done all that work, then it certainly could work.
If not, it might work too, but you might as well do the talking now.
If you're right for each other I think your marriage will work whether you lived together or not.
We got engaged when we were both in college, living at home. We chose to wait until we were established in our careers, and had enough money to have a house, but that was a personal preferance because, to be honest, the first couple of years we lived "on our own" was tough enough financially that throwing marriage in the mix probably wasn't the best idea. 
