I Was Overjoyed To Get Engaged At 19. Then, Like With Millie Bobby Brown, The Comments Began.

When Millie Bobby Brown posted what appeared to be an engagement announcement to Jake Bongiovi on Instagram, it nearly broke the internet. While some commenters offered congratulations, many people couldn’t get over the fact that she is 19. In fact, “She’s 19” trended on Twitter soon after she posted the news.

I was 19 when my boyfriend of two years dropped to his knees on the beach at sunset and asked me in his nervously awkward but oh-so-endearing way if I would marry him.

I didn’t hesitate to say yes. He swept me into his arms and kissed me, relief surging through every muscle of his body. We watched what should have been the sunset over the water but the horizon had filled with stunning lightning strikes that punctuated the dark sky in the distance.

Then we headed into town to celebrate. I was too young to toast our engagement with Champagne, so we got ice cream cones at Dairy Queen. The heat and humidity of that July evening melted them and, as we strolled through the quaint seaside town, the chocolate dripped down my arms and onto my pink dress, which still hangs in my closet all these years later.

When we excitedly broke the news to our families, most of our relatives thought we were too young, too naive, and didn’t have enough of a practical life plan to get married.

They weren’t completely wrong about that last part. My recently-graduated-from-college fiancé was having trouble finding a job, and I had only just finished my sophomore year of college and was bouncing from one creative major to the next, leaving most people to question my less-than-traditional career ambitions.

My late 30s self now recognizes how absurd this must have seemed to everyone around us. We had nothing figured out except that we each had found our person. There was no plan. All we knew is we wanted to start our life together by having the world legally recognize that we were on the same team.

Unlike Brown and Bongiovi, we didn’t have to face backlash from the Twitterverse or the rest of the hellscape known as social media because (1) we aren’t famous but also (2) none of that existed at the time of our engagement. Yet, we still faced so much criticism, especially from the people closest to us.

At least three different older adults sat me down and tried to talk me out of getting married ― or at the very least waiting.

People pelted us with questions like “Are you going to quit school?” and “How are…