single married or living together

[macash11]

I am a single mother and am currently seeing a guy and my aunt loves him so she asked him to move in...now we constantly argue so Im starting to change my mind about this

[diala84]

Me and my boyfriend were together over 6 years (5 years living together) and a lot of people would ask us about getting married. To me weddings always sounded terrible. It was a day to spend tons of money to impress and entertain your guests rather than a actually spend it together as a couple. It looked very stressful and hectic and honestly I had no desire to get married but then we started talking about it and we decided to elope to Las Vegas a couple months ago. And I couldn't be happier about it.

It was much cheaper (about $1800) for the whole trip (wedding, dress, suit, wedding dvd, wedding photos, hotel, plane tickets, a Las Vegas show, spending money, food, out to eat at two very nice restaurants, car rental, rings,  etc..) for about three days. I'm really glad we decided to have that type of wedding. We were able to have a nice intimate ceremony and a honeymoon all in one. We surprised our families at Christmas time last year so we could tell both our families in person.

The main reason we waited probably was financial for the most part. I read somewhere that the average wedding costs $24,000. I couldn't imagine spending that much money for something like that. I'm really glad we went this route although I am not looking forward to questions about having kids, uggg. 

[patycake56]

MARRIED 38 yrs

[plennis]

I'm married and have been for many many years..happily...and we do fight sometimes (that seemed wierd that one of the comments was that they lived together and never had a fight...).  I also have worked very closely with several hospitals and hospice's in my area.  One great reason I see for getting married besides tax advantages, if your significant other is in the hospital..very ill, possibly not going to make it...you are NOT considered family and very often are excluded from any visitation or any say in how or what way they are treated or not treated.  I have seen couples who have been together for years..one passes away and the family gets all the things they worked for instead of the significant other because the state does not recognize them as legally family.  The advantage of marriage comes in really handy when things get to the worst..the better is a piece of cake.