Wedding during Opt School?

[al074755]

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Hi! So my fiance and I are trying to set a date for our wedding. I will be a first year in 2011 at PCO and he will be a second year in med-school. I was thinking about an October 2012 date because this will be after his first round of boards and a year before mine, but I am worried about the amount of course work (exam dates) during my second year. PCO wont release any real calendar to me until August but I would like to have a good idea of when i would like to plan for. I am also from the area so I would not have to travel far.

If anyone can provide input or if anyone has done this during their second year, that would be great. Maybe wait until rotations?

Thanks!!

 

[KHE]

Hi! So my fiance and I are trying to set a date for our wedding. I will be a first year in 2011 at PCO and he will be a second year in med-school. I was thinking about an October 2012 date because this will be after his first round of boards and a year before mine, but I am worried about the amount of course work (exam dates) during my second year. PCO wont release any real calendar to me until August but I would like to have a good idea of when i would like to plan for. I am also from the area so I would not have to travel far.

If anyone can provide input or if anyone has done this during their second year, that would be great. Maybe wait until rotations?

Thanks!!

I would suggest waiting until you are both finished school.

People did get married while I was in school and it's obviously doable but the problem from a marriage perspective is that optometry school/medical school residency puts a real strain on any relationship. You just won't have much time for each other and IMHO, it's not a good basis from which to start a marriage. Marriage is hard enough without all the aggrivations of being in school and living the student lifestyle. I would not do it until after you are finished school. There is nothing about marriage at this point of your lives that will strengthen your relationship. In fact, I would say being married will add stress.

That being said, I am fully aware that pretty much not a single person in the history of mankind who was in love and considering marriage ever actually listens to advice like this so I would say best of luck to the newlyweds. lol.

 

[stonegoat]

i would suggest waiting until you are both finished school.

People did get married while i was in school and it's obviously doable but the problem from a marriage perspective is that optometry school/medical school residency puts a real strain on any relationship. You just won't have much time for each other and imho, it's not a good basis from which to start a marriage. Marriage is hard enough without all the aggrivations of being in school and living the student lifestyle. I would not do it until after you are finished school. There is nothing about marriage at this point of your lives that will strengthen your relationship. In fact, i would say being married will add stress.

That being said, i am fully aware that pretty much not a single person in the history of mankind who was in love and considering marriage ever actually listens to advice like this so i would say best of luck to the newlyweds. Lol.

x2

 

[4Eyes]

I got married during school. A few of my classmates got married during school, too, but their weddings were in the summers. I got married first year over winter break. Doing it when you have some sort of break seems a lot less stressful, but I don't know what your summers are like from here on out, and I imagine your fiance doesn't get much of a summer break, either. So what I'm about to say may not apply if it would mean you and your fiance would miss out on class/clinic time in order to get married.... Doing it during rotations doesn't sound like a good idea either unless you get break time between rotations.

Personally, I never felt that being married added stress. Yes, there are things to consider when you are a serious student in a serious relationship, especially time factors, but if you're going to be in a relationship anyway, and you're sure you're going to end up married, you might as well go ahead and get married. Of course that's probably not good advice for everyone, but it can be just fine--even beneficial, I think--if you go into it with realistic expectations. My feeling was, if I'm going to be poor, busy, and stressed anyway, I might as well be poor, busy, and stressed while married to the person I love the most and keeps me as sane as possible when I start to get overwhelmed. =) I haven't regretted it.

What you don't want to happen is letting wedding planning interfere with your studies before you're actually married. Most of my planning was done before I even started school, and we had a relatively small, relatively thrifty wedding anyway.

 

[thecgrblue]

I'd say go for it...you'll get a great dose of what life will really be like with you both as students before you even get married if you wait that long. Take your sweet time making those wedding plans.

 

[al074755]

Thanks for all of your responses! I probably should have added that I have been with my now fiance since high school (going on almost 8 years) and we are currently living together. We have been through almost everything good and bad, so Im sure marriage wont kill us while we are both in school. I was more worried about the course load during the month of October to plan a wedding and actually have a weekend off...

I just want to make it official!! 🙂

 

[KHE]

Thanks for all of your responses! I probably should have added that I have been with my now fiance since high school (going on almost 8 years) and we are currently living together. We have been through almost everything good and bad, so Im sure marriage wont kill us while we are both in school. I was more worried about the course load during the month of October to plan a wedding and actually have a weekend off...

I just want to make it official!! 🙂

As someone who has been married for nearly 11 years now and having lived with my then fiance for almost 4 years, I would still suggest not doing it while in school.

Marriage changes you. It really does and it's hard to explain it to someone in your situation because you've been together a long time and you've lived together presumably for a while now too.

Once you are married, you still sleep on the same side of the bed. You still eat the same food. You still watch the same TV shows.

But it's still different. Not in a good or bad way, per se. Probably some good, some bad. But it's different.

I'll try to think of a better way of articulating it but I guess the closest thing I came up with is that a marriage takes WORK. It's NOT THE SAME as a live-in boyfriend or girlfriend. It's just NOT. And when you're in school in the type of programs that you're in you just won't have the time or energy to put into making a marriage strong. An exhorbitant amount of your attention is diverted elsewhere. And it becomes really easy to take each other for granted.

And you're now thinking "well, you don't understand. We're different. We've been though a lot! We've been through bad times! (S)He is my soulmate! We love each other. We'd never take each other for granted."

Marriage is simply a game changer. There's no way to describe it to someone who's not married.

And again, I completely expect that you will not follow the suggestion of not doing it. That's part of being young, in love and wanting to get married. lol. I get that completely. I was there once. I guess I feel I have to do my duty as a moderator and say DON'T DO IT.

Now get back to your wedding planning. lol

 

[eyestrain]

I got married in the summer before OD school. I thought it was a breeze to be married through school, but I was never one to spend every second studying, so we had plenty of time together.

 

[Ryan_eyeball]

I agree with KHE to wait until after school. Marriage changes people, it is different.

Personally we didn't live together because of our religious views.

But what do i know what leads to a lifelong marriage. What are the statistics now...50% of marriages end by the 5 year mark.

Split marriages are making insurance billing more challenging. Example: a 10year old boy (Joe Wild) in the exam chair, with insurance BCBS (Cardholder, Jane Doe: Mom), and another insurance: Aetna (Dan Smith: Dad). No one know who has the primary insurance. Then you bill an insurance company and the other one will fight you back and forth who should be primary insurance.

Good Luck!

 

[stoikiometry]

Marriage is simply a game changer. There's no way to describe it to someone who's not married.

Before, you could drop everything and end it. Now there's an expectation to maintain it, and divorce would be so embarrassing it's as if it's taboo. Nothing actually changed except turning back now is frowned upon. Is that it or am I totally off the mark?

 

[lilxkgrli]

I would say it would also depend on what kind of wedding you want and what type of person you are....

For example, if you want everything to be PERFECT... then don't

if you're the type that's indecisive... then don't (need time to go through a ton of choices)

if you want a huge wedding... obviously then don't

if you want to do everything else and don't want to hire a wedding planner... then don't

if you already know exactly what you want and you've been deciding since you were a kid what kind of flowers, venue, etc you want... then go for it.

My sister got married practically right after she finished med-school and she was very overwhelmed and stressed!!.. luckily she had me and her closest friends to help her out before the special day.

I was going through the same thing and pretty much we decided... we're just going to get married at a court to make it official but actually have the wedding of our dreams once I finished so that I could put more time into the planning. =) I think it would be worth the wait~ you only get married once... or so I hope hehe

BTW congrats! good luck with whatever you choose!!

 

[Ryan_eyeball]

Americans put way too much emphasis on the wedding day by spending thousands and thousands of dollars. Instead we should be focusing on stronger marriages!!

 

[KHE]

Before, you could drop everything and end it. Now there's an expectation to maintain it, and divorce would be so embarrassing it's as if it's taboo. Nothing actually changed except turning back now is frowned upon. Is that it or am I totally off the mark?

No, I don't think it's that. Divorce is not taboo. More than 50% of marriages now end in divorce, so it's hardly taboo. It shouldn't be embarrassing either. Disappointing, maybe.

It's that marriage takes a lot more work and attention than people realize. It takes more work than living together with someone, even for a long period of time. When you're in a program like optometry or medicine, or in the OP's case BOTH, you just don't have the time and/or energy to put into a marriage. Too much of your attention is elsewhere and the marriage can start to feel like a boat anchor around your neck. Not that marriage is a boat anchor or that you're going to have some sort of urge to sleep with your classmates but you've got all this stuff to deal with on a day to day basis and then after a horrible day of classes, exams, labs and clinic time you have to go home and deal with someone else's expectations and demands.

It's just too burdensome. I would not marry while in school.

 

[Ediddy]

If you want to get married then go for it. School isn't so traumatic that you have put your life on hold for 4 years. You'll be fine!

 

[fronik]

Prince William, Kate Middleton engaged during there second year , and Las Vegas Wedding planners have planed there whole function