If you’re looking for a wedding that jumped off the pages of a magazine, I’m afraid you might not want to come to mine.

There will be no five-star catering, no Super Bowl halftime show or paparazzi photographers.

The ceremony will look more like someone’s First Communion than a glamorous photo shoot.

In fact, the whole thing will feel rather…simple. This is because my fiancée and I are not only young; we are also poor.

I can already hear all the Aunt Bettys’ gasp (especially since my wife-to-be is, you know, a woman), “What?! You’re getting married so young? What about your career? What about travel? What about buying a condo and dating six thousand people?”

These days, if you are neither rich nor old, you get a lot of flack for wanting to get married—supposedly a wedding ceremony is not about two people starting a life together but a chance to show off how you’ve both already made it.

It’s the new American Dream: young adults are supposed to spend at least a decade climbing the corporate ladder, boozing it up in martini bars and filling our Facebook photo albums with pictures from around the world. We are told we need to live a little before we get tied down with marriage and family.

For young women especially, the pressure to do something—anything!—but marry and start a family is high. “Don’t make commitments with anything except your 401K,” is the new motto for the twenty-something, as if an accumulation of financial investments and collection of postcards is more important than real people in a real relationship.

The irony is, if we were to ask these Aunt Bettys’ what they live for, they would likely say family. Because behind all the propaganda, we can still catch a glimpse of the truth.

We were made for relationships.

People are more important than things.

And family life is a helluva lot more adventurous and satisfying than a late night downtown. The whole idea of piling money and experiences and one night stands sky-high sounds kinda narcissistic and materialistic to me.

And so my fiancée and I do not want our wedding to be about how we’ve already “made it” but about how we are two young people who are in love and have made the decision to begin a life together…a life of responsibility, commitment, joys as well as struggles.

A life not of accumulation and things…but of giving and sharing.

Marriage might sit in decaying splendor, but it will never one day face demolition, as it is an integral part of our humanity.

You might find our marriage ceremony to be rather plain but (we hope) with the simplicity of that true, salt-of-the-earth modesty you just don’t find every day.

It will be elegant, yes, but only because it will be one of the oldest rituals around…the Rite of Holy Matrimony.

Sherri Rosen is now living in Harlem, New York. She has had her own publicity business for 12 years giving a powerful voice to people who are doing good things in the world.  She writes on her own blog at www.SherriRosen.Com, and www.GatekeepersPost, www.Triiibes.Com, www.Examiner.Com, and www.TheGoodMenProject.Com.

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Editor: Bryonie Wise