Teachers, textbooks and tying the knot

Springtime brings students warm weather, midterms and, for a few, wedding bells. The life-changing decision to get married begins to pique the interest of some students toward the end of their schooling career when they begin to look to their futures and whom they want to spend it with.

Photo illustration by Kamren Thompson

“The question of getting married while still in school came after we decided we had the means to get married,” Kenny Sigler, a senior political science major, said. “That was the first thing we looked at because if we couldn’t afford to get married, then we were going to wait.”

Sigler said he met his fiancé, Beka Moore, a resident nursing student at Tyler Junior College, around October of 2009, and started dating her six months later.

“It was easily within a couple of months of dating that I knew she was the one,” Sigler said.

On Sept. 5, 2010, Sigler asked Moore to marry him, and they began planning their summer wedding over a nine-month engagement.

“We are in a position where we can go to school and get married, and we didn’t want to wait,” Sigler said. “Most (engaged) people live together already and enjoy many other benefits of being married. For us, being married will be far from being engaged, and we couldn’t be more ready and excited to make that change.”

Sigler said planning the actual wedding has been a rush, “like the countdown to Christmas morning.”

He said between working hard in classes and staying on top of everybody participating in the wedding, the actual planning has been a challenge, but he isn’t worried about his marriage interfering with school.

“School will definitely take time away from other things I would rather be doing. That’s for sure,” Sigler said. “It will take a bit of discipline to make sure we dedicate enough time for our school work.”

The same can be said for Tyler Junior College students, Josh Ellis and his fiancé Jessi Myers, who both see marriage as a step toward a great future with one another.

“It was quite simple to make the decision to get engaged,” Ellis said. “We both knew that we loved each other and wanted to spend our lives together, but the decision came because we want our lives to start together sooner than later.”

Ellis asked Myers to marry him on March 6 and began planning for their wedding next summer.

“In my opinion, school will actually come a little easier for me,” Ellis said. “Instead of being on the road traveling and working out a balance time from seeing my fiancé and studying for school, now I can go straight home knowing that she will be there for me.”

While students plan accordingly for both their weddings and futures, many may be surprised by the reality of life.

“The hardest thing about getting married any time is the first year of marriage,” Joe Osteen, director of the University Baptist Student Ministry, said. “The biggest challenge is the lack of life experience. You go through a period of maturing from your freshman year to your senior year and, if you’re married, then you’re going through that maturation as well as marriage expectations.”

The pressures of engagement and marriage go beyond financial to knowing really when you want to get married, said Tony Puckett, Smith County Education Coordinator for VOW, a healthy-marriage education program.

“I think time considerations and financial pressures are huge,” Puckett said. “I think that marriage has the tendency to release some of the stress because you’re committed. Where it can cause pressure is taking two separate lives and making it become one thing.”

Rather than starting their financial lives independently, both couples hope to join their lives together at the very beginning.

“I want to build my life with her,” Sigler said. “I don’t want to tell her to wait while I build my empire then invite her in. We will build it together.”

For Jake Drew, a University senior computer-information-systems major, and wife Victoria McDowell- Drew, a University senior political-science major, marriage has been both challenging and a joy.

Mr. Drew said they met in April of 2008 and were engaged by April of 2009.

“I asked her to marry me on Easter Sunday during the Sunday dinner prayer,” he said. “I said, ‘God, please bless this food and help Victoria to say yes in a second when I ask her to marry me.’”

He said they were married in 2010, during their first year at the University together, and are currently working toward attending Southern Methodist University School of Law after graduation.

“We have never gotten to take a class together,” he said. “We are both very focused on our GPAs because of law school, so we spend a lot of time studying.”

The Drews remain very busy with work, school and their extra curricular activities: he with the Spirit Squad cheerleaders and she with the Patriot Singers.

“Finances are a primary concern each semester, and two full-time students make money hard to come by,” he said. “It is very important for relationships to remain ‘balanced,’ and two working, married, full-time students is equivalent to attempting to balance on a tightrope made of dental floss.”

He said although it’s a busy lifestyle, the help and support they receive from friends and family help out.

“It’s a crazy, challenging life, but anything worth having is worth working hard for,” he said. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”