I took this morning off to get measured up for some threads for a friend's wedding.  I arrived early into "Blacktie" and the shop was empty, except for the man working there.  This one on one situation left things a little awkward, and I soon began to feel that tension that often builds in the minutes preceding an outbreak of small talk.  A few minutes later, it broke out.

"So, are you the best man?"
"No, groomsman", I replied. But it didn't seem like enough, and unease forced me on : "One of seven.  And there are only four bridesmaids.  The poor things will be rushed off their feet when it comes to the dancing.  Haha".
"I see. And where is it on?".  He smoothed the wrinkles from his measuring tape.
"Sutton castle", I said.  Then, after a pause : In Sutton".  This could only have sounded sillier if I also said "In a castle". I felt about as grown up and independent as the time when I was getting fitted for my first communion suit and I had no underwear.
"Should be nice", said he, ignoring my reply, then stooping to measure my leg length.  "Are you married yourself?" he asked.   I'm not sure what it is about this question, but it always unsettles me when I'm asked it by a man.  Particularly one that wears a bright yellow shirt, works in men's fashions and, from the perspective of a passerby, had just gone down on me.  I thought quickly to find a way out.  "No", I said, failing to find one.  "No, I'm not". 
"Ah jaysus, you're getting on".  I was about to explain to him that I'm not quite as old as I look, that my short hair cut puts years on me and that I never asked for a wrinkly forehead, but luckily I managed to stop before I made a fool of myself.  "Time for you to settle down and get yourself a little wife".  In my opinion, a girl's stature, or lack of it, contributes little to her suitability as a wife, but it seems he failed to take this into account when choosing her. "If you don't move fast you might be left on the shelf".

The rest of my day is incidental, because I've spent the time since meditating over what he said, trying to justify my unweddedness and, in case I failed to do so, plotting the entrapment into wedlock of the nearest passing female.  Passing females seemed to sense my mindset, and disappeared hurriedly into the nearest shop or across the street in reaction to my menacing approach.  While I'm not exactly new to this experience, it is a little unsettling directly after somebody of indeterminate sexuality has questioned your marriagability.  But I'm glad to say its okay girls - I've succeeded in my justification.  You can come back out of the shops now.

I'm sure you'll agree that there are all kinds of important reasons for not rushing into marriage at an early age.  These reasons include lack of maturity, uncertainty about what you want from life and the fear that your father will beat the shit out of you.  But the really important reasons, the reasons that make me comfortable with the fact that I am not married, require a little more thought.

If you get married when you're older, your friends will be older too.  So they will be earning more than when they were in their twenties.  This means, obviously, that they can afford to buy you much better presents.  You should use this knowledge when drawing up your wedding list.  There will be less pressure to put in a few cheap items to cater for the paupers who are still wearing the clothes they had in college and are living in Rathmines and who are otherwise liable to present you with a traffic cone to celebrate the occasion.  In short, get married young and you'll end up with a surplus of single bar toasters, wait a while and you'll end up wondering where you're going to store your surplus of ever so posh ionized water decanters.  

Your friend's greater affluence in their later years will also mean that they won't turn up wearing torn combats and CND t-shirts to terrorize your aunt with their revolutionary convictions.  Since they're metabolism's will have slowed they won't eat as much and you won't end up paying for the herd of bullocks that had to be slaughtered before Tom "The Breadbasket" Murphy, who spent the morning running up a mountain just because it was there, finally had enough.  Chances are that they're no longer party animals either.  Its unlikely that they'll still be doing drugs, fighting and puking all over themselves until half five in the morning (unless, that is, you're a knacker or you're getting married in a prison).  This means that you don't have to spend so much time with your friends that you want to ram their cheap bloody toasters down their loud bloody mouths.   Because, lets face it, they earlier you take leave of those guys, the earlier you get your paws on the new missus' mature ass.  Also, please remember that a woman is reputedly at her sexual peak in her early thirties.  That’s the time at which you want to go on honeymoon with her, not when she's 21 and wants to spend the whole day riding around on the banana boat (unless, of course, she shares your perverted interpretation of the words "banana" and "boat").

Another benefit to tying the knot when you're older is that your in-laws are probably dead, or close to it.  Or maybe they're in comas. Or they're nuts.  Whatever the situation, they're going to be so out of it that you're unlikely to have to listen to the usual in-law demands for too long.  Demands for things like regular Sunday visits, Christmas cards and - grandchildren.  In-laws insist on grandchildren.  Many couples that get married early in life end up with hundreds of kids purely out of frustration with the in-laws' refusal to countenance a fruitless marriage.  Unrelenting badgering often produces a bit of a scene like this :

"You want kids", scream the newly-weds.  "You want some?  Is that what you want?"  Here the in-laws try to swallow hard, because they're scared, but they have no saliva and they just make clicking noises.  
"Well here's one for you.  A nice baby boy.  We made nine months ago.  You're happy now, aren't you?  Here take it, it's for you.  Call it after yourselves.   Here, have another - no take ten.  We're so fertile, we'll make as many as you want."  It can be hard to resist this kind of pressure, so the best thing to do is not expose yourself to it.  Better to wait until the in-laws are dead.

So these are the reasons I am at ease about not having had waited nervously at the top of the isle.  Its an explanation much friendlier to my ego than the real one.  The truth is that I smell and, because I have a tendency to dispatch small globules of saliva in the direction of the listener everytime I talk excitedly or use a word beginning with 'M', girls seem to loose interest as soon as I introduce myself.  Maybe I should change my name to Fred.