Mousa lives in Saudi Arabia, working a job that will help him pay the cost of their marriage and provide for their future life together. The next time Nisreen will see him will be at their wedding in Amman, several months from now. Regardless, Nisreen considers herself one of the lucky ones.
Despite her long-distance love and the wedding planning falling squarely on her shoulders, she is among the few young Jordanians getting married at her age. The reasons are varied for delaying marriage, but many in Jordan cite the steep matrimonial price as a major deterrent. These days, Jordanian women are marrying around the age of 24, and men around the age of This is one of the highest ages in the world for men to be getting married for the first time.
From the dowry and the wedding ceremony to the cost of a first home, the financial obligation of marriage traditionally falls on the man in Jordan.
Rami, who did not give Al Jazeera his last name for privacy reasons, works in IT at a large international organisation in a wealthy area of West Amman. He spent five years saving, and at 36 years old, his marriage is only a few months old. And while the cost of a wedding is exceedingly high, matrimony has never been more necessary. He acknowledges that cultural and religious reasons elevate marriage in the Middle East.
Marriage in much of the Middle East is the social marker of adulthood. Society is anxious about late marriage for women because of the spectre of spinsterhood. An unmarried woman is seen as someone to be pitied. But some do not believe delaying marriage is necessarily negative.
