With the almost constant moaning that goes on at Dartmouth concerning the lack of dating opportunities here, marriage is past the realm of imagination for most students. But in this year's senior class, there are at least ten students getting married to classmates or recent alumni around the time of graduation.
Emily Csatari '99 is getting married this coming September to Randall Poulin '97 whom she met her freshman winter.
She said as she sees it, a lot of Dartmouth relationships either have "negative commitment" or total commitment. She said she and Poulin were devoted to each other from the beginning of their relationship.
"I think a lot of my friends are not in that mindset," she said. "They haven't met somebody who could put them in that mindset."
Csatari said she has thought about marriage since she was young, but she didn't necessarily think she would meet the man she would marry when she came to Dartmouth.
Michelle Gregg '99 did not have much dating experience in high school, and didn't think that this precedent would change when she came to college.
"Honestly, I didn't think there was a person for me," she said.
But on June 26, she will marry Ben Sweetser '97 at Aquinas House.
Like many of the seniors from this year's graduating class who have "set the date," Gregg met her husband-to-be early on in her career at the College.
She said she met Sweetser as a freshman when they were in the marching band together playing the trombone and bass drum.
They started dating during her sophomore fall, and he proposed during a band trip to New York on the top of the Empire State Building.
Gregg said he slipped a ring on her finger, but since her high school class ring goes back and forth between them, she thought nothing of it.
"I didn't pay much attention until I looked down," she said. "I was a little surprised."
Cesar Ruiz '99 met Emily Cornell '99 at a party in Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity about a year and a half ago and they are getting married on July 17.
He said he led Cornell to believe that they would get married about a year after their graduation, even while he was planning his proposal.
"I wanted to do it by Occum Pond," he said. "But it was raining the entire week. I kept on putting it off, putting it off. It was killing me because I had the ring."
Finally, Ruiz gave in to the weather gods and proposed to Cornell in his room, which he assured The Dartmouth was tidy at the time.
Erica Wygonik '99, who will not graduate until next year, said she got engaged to Peter Barnes '98, her husband of a little over a month, only after he sent her on a "wild goose chase."
She said he showed up at her apartment and handed her a manila envelope and whispered something to her housemate before leaving.
She said in the envelope was a crossword puzzle, which she struggled to complete while doing her afternoon activities.
She said after going around Hanover and collecting planted clues, she finally figured out that she had to go to a covered bridge near Barnes' apartment in Lebanon.
"I was a half hour late," she said. "He was hiding and jumped out at me."
When he was down on one knee proposing, one of the mothers of a high school student Wygonik works with drove by, she said.
Wygonik said Barnes told all her friends before she found out, but she said it was not really a big surprise.
Wygonik, like many of the students The Dartmouth talked with, said her parents were surprised when she first told them.
"My parents thought I was going to wait until after graduation," she said. "My dad got upset right away. He secluded himself for a week."
Fannie Bulaon '98, who will marry Ron Boskovic '99 after his graduation this June, said her parents thought she was not prepared for marriage, having just graduated from college.
"Everyone was surprised," she said. "They said we were too young."
Despite this criticism, the students are positive that they are ready for married life.
"I think we just know," Bulaon said.
"We've had a very good relationship," Hilary Cheyne '99, who will marry Joel Stanton '99 on June 20, said. "We're very open with each other."
Since Stanton proposed by kneeling down while on a camping trip in Utah this past September, they have been busy planning the wedding, including making their own rings at the jewelry studio at the Hopkins Center.
Most of the students interviewed said planning a wedding was a tough thing to do on top of the burdens of college life. They said making invite lists and sending out invitations were very time consuming.
Bulaon and Boskovic said their wedding was especially hard to plan because it will have two ceremonies - one in Bosnia with Boskovic's family and one in the United States with Bulaon's family.
Is the work worth it? Wygonik at least says she likes married life so far.
She said she has enjoyed trying to get into a routine and learning things about her husband like their nightly rituals and the first things they do when they wake up in the morning.
"It's neato," she said. "It's fun to just kind of have this thing before you, this thing being life."
