The Beauty of Being an “Older” Bride
Image via Stocksy.
By Doree Shafrir
Last year, when she was 48, Los Angeles-based clinical psychologist Noosha Niv married her longtime partner in a cave near Playa del Carmen. Niv wore a skirt her grandmother had made when she was 20 along with a hand-dyed corset and jewelry that had belonged to her mother. The first part of the ceremony incorporated aspects of Niv’s Iranian heritage, and then Niv and her partner moved further into the cave for a more traditional American ceremony.
“The emphasis there was more that marriage is hard, and every day is a choice that we make to be in it,” Niv told me recently.
Niv is among a growing cohort of women who are choosing to get married in their mid- to late-40s — on their own terms. Indeed, the choice to get married for the first time in your late 40s has historically not felt like a choice. In 1986, an infamous Newsweek article called “The Marriage Crunch” declared that women over 40 who had never been married had greater odds of “being killed by a terrorist” than finding a spouse — the implication being that highly educated women with professional careers were sacrificing the possibility of partnership.
This hyperbole served no one well. An entire generation of women grew up thinking that if they weren’t married by 30, it was never happening, and that they had to essentially choose between pursuing a career and getting married. Meanwhile, a 2016 study found that among women ages 40 to 45, women with advanced degrees had the highest rate of marriage, and the median age of first marriage for women hit 28.2 in 2022 — in 1947, it was 20.5.
Weddings in your mid- to late-forties look different, too. If many of the weddings of our 20s and 30s were characterized by excess — bloated guest lists, afterparties, random hookups, expensive bridal gowns (say yes to the dress!), 10-plus bridesmaids, and free-flowing alcohol, not to mention multiple pre-wedding events — the weddings of people getting married for the first time in middle age tend to be… calmer. Smaller. More practical. There’s still excitement and romance, but it’s served with a lot less pressure to perform certain traditions.
Gail Prickett, a 45-year-old communications consultant in Columbus, Ohio, is currently planning her wedding to her partner of eight years. “The one thing that struck me [in my 20s] was how similar all the weddings were,” she said. “I still want something fun, but just scaled way, way back. My friends' weddings seemed to cause them a lot of stress in terms of planning and the expense, and I want to avoid that as much as possible. If you were a Sex and the City fan, I am 1000% a Miranda when it comes to all this shit.”
Clara (not her real name), an American professor living in London who got married at 48, reflected that her wedding ended up being “much different” than one she would have had when she was younger. “It was smaller, more intimate, cheaper but more meaningful,” she said. “There were more friends, without people who felt obligated to be there.” She and her husband got married in the registry office in London, then had an 18-person reception at one of their favorite restaurants in Soho. She wore a dress she’d bought the previous summer.
Similarly, Prickett says her current idea is to either elope or have a small ceremony and then a reception later. One thing she’s certain of? No white dress. “I’m short and a size 1X, so my goal is to find something that doesn’t make me look like a matronly prison guard,” she said. “I’ve been eyeing some things on Hill House, as well as Anthropologie and eShakti. I want to look like me, just elevated a smidge.”
The women I spoke to seemed keenly aware that spending thousands of dollars on a dress you wear once is perhaps not the most prudent use of funds in one’s late 40s. NYU professor and crossword puzzle constructor Amanda Yesnowitz got married at 47 and wore what she described as “an off-the-rack BCBG bridal-esque frock” and on her feet, robin’s-egg blue lace-up booties from Zara; her husband wore a suit from Banana Republic.
That difference manifests in other ways, like forgoing some of the more traditional aspects of wedding culture. “I can’t imagine having a bridal shower where people give me things like toasters and towels,” Prickett said. “I already have a nice toaster and plush towels because I’m a 45-year-old with a good job!”
The decision about whether or not to even get married at this age is a more nuanced one, too. For Niv, the considerations were both emotional and practical. Her nine-year-old daughter was “trying to understand why we weren’t married — her friends’ parents are married, why weren’t we? Does it mean we love each other less? She was kind of questioning our level of commitment.” The COVID pandemic also made Niv and her partner confront the realities of not being married. “The fact that we weren’t automatically allowed to make each other’s health decisions really became an issue,” she said.
Similarly, Clara and her partner’s conversation around marriage “was prompted by COVID entry requirements in the early summer of 2021,” she said. “It became clear my husband wouldn’t be able to join us to visit my parents in Denver without legal marriage. The discussion evolved from there, and we decided it was something we wanted to do in the autumn even if my parents had to attend virtually.”
For Yesnowitz, the 2016 election was the catalyst. She and her now-husband had been together for four years, “and truly committed,” she told me. “But we both felt this cosmic nudge to get closer to each other if we could. The world was suddenly so different — so scary, so tenuous. And clinging to love felt safe — essential, even.” The wedding itself? An exciting day, a beautiful day, but ultimately, not the main event. As Yesnowitz put it, “We celebrate each other all the time, so our wedding was just one beautiful day in a collection of many, many beautiful days.”