am I getting liberal in my old age?

Moms can be funny.  My mother was not too pleased when my son and his wife named their first born with a first name that is normally associated with the Jewish etnicity, and neither of them are Jewish.  I think it took her a while to get over it.  She's really an old throwback, still living in the 1950's and thinks the entire world is like the "I Love Lucy" show. 

Having done this myself, I would now agree with your mom. 

The number I've heard is something like a 75% divorce rate. 

bad statistic: people who don't live together before getting married include the very religious and the very conservative who are also more likely to NOT divorce on principle, even if they are miserable...

(but then again, I must admit I was slightly disappointed when my brother and his GF  moved in together before getting engaged...  so who knows...)

Also that statistic includes people moving in before engagment.  As in moving in together while still dating.  We've been together for a year not living together and now that we are engaged, we are moving in.  It's basicly the same thing as us getting married this fall and living together, except in the eyes of the law, the wedding isn't until next fall.

Maybe my views on what a wedding means are just suspect.  Personally the physical act of a wedding is a nice gesture and makes legal stuff easier (and tax stuff...), but in terms of commitment and the actual relationship, it's just a piece of paper on file in some dingy old courthouse.  The wedding has nothing to do with whether the realtionship will work or not.

We actually thought about that.  I happened to luck out and my dad's health insurence still covers me until I'm 25 as long as I'm in school....as long as I'm still single.  Since that insurence is the most inclusive insurence I have ever been under (PT is fully covered without a refferal!), so I can't afford to give it up until the last possible minute.

People spout statistics on this issue as a means to promote their own opinion on the matter.  Relationships are hard, and take a lot of work, and if you are not committed to that hard work, you are doomed regardless of your marital status.

Personally, I lived with my husband for 10 years before we got married - married now for three years in August, all is well.  Just to fly further in the face of statistics, we were both in relationships before (him married 10 years, me living together for 6 years) AND we both had kids so we blended our families.  Statistically, we had about a .000001 chance of making it work.  Also, my 5 brothers and sisters all married their spouses before living with them, and every single one of them has been divorced at least once.  I have the longest term relationship of everyone in my family.

Love your family - be respectful toward their opinions - but for goodness sake man, live your own life.  If you're going to question your own beliefs every time someone challenges them (no matter who they are), then you don't know yourself well enough to be making these kinds of life decisions.

Best of luck to you.

Actually, one group for which they can't squeeze this one out of the stats is couples who are engaged before living together. So there goes that theory.

Haven't we all heard these arguments in other places?

1.  As cited above, higher % of divorce rate.

2.  Finding out what it is like to live with a person after you are married is a recipe for either a divorce or a miserable marriage.

For those of you out there who are or have been married, when you fight/argue is it about anything that had to do with whether you lived together first or not?  Isn't a divorce about the marriage not working?  Don't tell me statistics pro or con either side.  Regardless of whether you are currently married, divorced, happy, miserable ask yourself this question.  Is your current situation the result of whether you lived together or did not before you got married?  I'd be curious to hear from people on both sides.

I realize this is a hijack of sorts so I'll try to address the OP again.

I knew on my first date with my wife that I would marry her and she was my soul mate.  The earth moved that day for me.  I looked at my hand, then passed hers over mine, and looked at my hand again.  It was different.  My whole world changed when she entered it.  She moved in with me a month later and we were married about a year after that.  The logistics of when we got married had nothing to do with our marriage and everything to do with the wedding.  The event of wedding and the life of a marriage have very little to do with each other in my mind. 

Vortmax - you've already thought it out, discussed it with her, made a plan that works for the two of you.  Your success or failure as a married couple will be 100% dependent on the two of you and you two alone.  If that's what all y'all (my fav new term-I learned it from a Texan!) feel that's the plan that gives you most chance for success then do it.  Forget everyone else. 

I won't characterize your mother or her intentions. I will, however, encourage you to make your own decisions. It's your life, you get to make your own mistakes (not saying it's a mistake). It's not your mother's job or place to make choices for you. That's YOUR job.

Go - fall down. Pick yourself up. Make mistakes. Make decisions that are right for you.

I would have to say it's just Moms. When Eric and I moved in together, she had all sorts of nightmare scenarios, ranging from 'why buy the cow?' to horrible breakups, no legal protection, yada, yada, yada. We weren't engaged and didn't have any 'deadlines' set for when we should be. You know, I'm not even certain whether he felt he would marry me or not when we moved in. I knew he'd marry me, though. (Edit: we did talk about it extensively and I was satisfied that he did that was more commitment and put us, at the very least, on the track to marriage. I didn't just move in, not knowing his feelings).

My Mom got over it pretty quickly, though, when she really thought about it. Statistics do not equal predestination and we are both very stable human beings. She knew what our relationship was like and that we had a very healthy loving relationship. Moving in first was simply what was right for us.

After we moved to Helena, I was working at a job without health insurance, so we started talking about stuff. I think we decided to get married on Friday and went to the courthouse and did it the following Thursday. Not that it wasn't a topic that had been kicked around before. We didn't exactly do it on a whim. Now, we're married and have utmost feeling of commitment to eachother. We're having the ceremony (the 'spiritual marriage' as opposed to the legal one) in June.

Your Mom will get over it. She might never like it, but she will accept it eventually, if she's at all reasonable.

Edited to add: I agree with Tri Iowa and had meant to include it in my little story. Living together first made us stronger and was an essential step, I think, in the development of our relationship. For some people, it wouldn't be the right thing and I recognize that, but for us, it was. It's living together with no increased feeling of commitment that is potentially damaging to the relationship.

Thanks for all your encouragment.  I really wasn't posting it as a "what should I do" type of question.  I (we) have already made the decision and there is no stopping that.  I just wanted some encouragment that yes I am being rational.

I've heard all the nightmare scenarios too.  As far as I can tell, my mom is still in the denial stage of the "5 stages of grief."