Julia Shaw, who married at 23, defends the decision to start young. My wife & I were about the same age as this couple when we married, and from our vantage point 25 years later, she has it exactly right. This story appears in Slate, but it's no #Slatepitch.
Marriage wasn’t something we did after we’d grown up—it was how we have grown up and grown together. … Sometimes people delay marriage because they are searching for the perfect soul mate. But that view has it backward. Your spouse becomes your soul mate after you've made those vows to each other in front of God and the people who matter to you. You don’t marry someone because he’s your soul mate; he becomes your soul mate because you married him.