Every morning, Huang Yu and Shen Hao wake up when Shen's mother calls them. They scrabble around for the clothes they will wear for the day, grab a bit of breakfast if they can find any on the table and head to their work, leaving behind a living room scattered with empty sweet bags and a bedroom where bedclothes and pajamas have been strewn.

If there wasn't a framed wedding picture of them hanging on the wall, it would be hard to guess that they have been married for more than a year. Two months before they graduated from Shanghai University last year, Huang and Shen registered their marriage.

They are not the only husband and wife to get married while students. Two graduates from a college in Wuhan, Hubei Province, found fame after posting pictures of themselves on the Internet. The loving pictures attracted more than 200,000 visitors. They plan to marry the minute they have officially graduated.

Last year in Shanghai, two senior students at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics got engaged on campus, two months before their graduation. The photos and videos of their wedding ceremony were also viewed thousands of times and the couple was invited to appear on several television talk shows to share their marriage stories.

Traditionalists frown upon this romantic trend, saying that there are unexpected problems for these very young couples ahead. But the young people insist that they are clear-minded when they decided to get married and they have been maturing in marriage.

The love dilemma

For the months before she graduated Huang Yu was facing a dilemma. Her boyfriend, the man she loved, was determined to leave for Beijing to start his career and she was even more determined that she wanted to be by his side.

Unlike the traditional arrangement where the man proposes, Huang started thinking of proposing marriage first because she believed that a marriage certificate would tie her to the boyfriend and would certainly help persuade her parents to let her go to Beijing with him. "I was thinking that life would be secure as long as we got married. And no matter what difficulties we might face, our parents would always try their best to help as we are their only children," Huang recalled. So Huang meticulously planned and eventually proposed to the man she had been in love with for three years.

Li Juan and Xu Wei are another couple who got married when the bride was a third-year college student and the groom a senior. For them the marriage proposal happened naturally one afternoon.

"It was an afternoon after a nap. My boyfriend proposed to me suddenly. I was a bit surprised at first but my immediate response was, 'yes, I do,'" Li, who is now six months pregnant, told the Global Times. Li and Xu got married in 2007 when they were both students in the Southeast University in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. By then they had been dating for two years. Talking about the proposal, Li said that her boyfriend at that stage was going through a great deal of stress facing an oral exam for his thesis. He was also very depressed because he was about to leave to begin work in Shanghai but she was planning to stay in Nanjing for another year to finish her studies.

"He proposed suddenly and I didn't hesitate and agreed. I guess that's partly because we were both architecture students. What we learn is art-related. We are kind of emotional. The feelings then were just right," Li said.

Of course, Li added that they respected each other's attitudes and the way of doing things, which they both believed was the basis of a good marriage.

For many parents in Shanghai, Zhejiang girl Zhang Jie is a little too young to be wed. The 22-year-old will get married next month immediately after her college graduation. But for Zhang, the combination of graduation and matrimony is natural. "We've been in love for seven years. We know each other very well, our hobbies, our habits, and our temperaments. It seems like we have been a couple for years. A marriage certificate just adds to the perfection of our life," Zhang told the Global Times. She and her husband met and fell in love when they were first-year students in senior high school.

Different strokes

Shanghai girl Huang Yu is now an office worker in Beijing. With assistance from their parents, Huang and her husband have a mortgage and are buying an apartment in the capital. When she gets together with friends and classmates, she finds that they are leading very different lives these days.

"Most of my friends are still single and are talking about possible boyfriends. The major concern in my life is paying off the mortgage of nearly 4,000 yuan ($630) a month, which is a huge burden for us. I like to occasionally complain to some of my friends that life is hard," the 23-year-old said.

Being a married woman has also set her apart at the office where she works. Huang said that when she filled in some personal details on a form at work, her colleagues were stunned and surrounded her asking her about her life. They had discovered she had ticked the married box and not the box for single. "I felt a little awkward when I suddenly became the major topic of discussion during lunch or breaks," Huang said.

For Li Juan, a similar experience made her feel relaxed. "I felt quite proud when I told others that I was married," Li smiled. Life after graduation is much more complicated than that on campus and Li said she was lucky that the decision to marry was not about materialism. Even so the young couple has had to handle disagreements.

"My husband was under a lot of pressure at work and to certain extent he became materialistic and kind of profit-oriented. I have tried to stay the same all the time," Li said. She emphasized that it was their mutual trust and respect that helped them overcome the unhappy moments.

Unlike most young people who have been in love for two or three years before deciding to get married upon graduation, Zhang Jie has been together with her boyfriend for seven years. And she believes that her life after marriage will be the same as before. "After all we're very familiar with each other. We've experienced bitter arguments and great moments of joy and excitement together. Both our families get along well."

Parental backing

Noticing an increase in the number of students getting married when they graduated, Sun Baohong, the deputy director of the Institute of Adolescents at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, carried out some research. He found that most of these student married couples relied on financial support from their parents to maintain their lifestyle. "When they got married they weren't psychologically prepared to shoulder the responsibilities that a married person should. Financially they continued to rely largely on their parents."

Fan Yingying, who has just graduated from Shanghai International Studies University this month, married in February this year. Unlike most of her classmates, she is not looking for work. Fan, a Wenzhou native, is from a well-off family while her husband's family also runs a business there. "It's like a tradition in my hometown that girls get married in their early 20s. So it was quite natural for me," Fan told the Global Times.

She admitted that she was supported financially by her parents after getting married and in the short term she has no plans to look for work. She has other ideas about how to provide for herself. "I have part-time jobs as a yoga teacher and a translator. These jobs don't have regular working hours. This is what I want for my life. The money is not great but it is enough to cover my daily expenses," she said.

Professor Sun said that getting married at too young an age could cause problems. "Being unable to be financially independent could dampen young people's enthusiasm to try different things or push ahead in a career. They could grow increasingly dependent on their parents. The phenomenon could also change the current demographic structure in the country, which might cause other problems," he said.

Other critics of student marriages suggest that some of the brides are merely avoiding the stress of hunting for jobs and work after graduating. Yan Wenhua, a professor in psychology at East China Normal University, said that while it might appear that marriage was the easiest way to avoid the pressures, it could get particularly problematic in the future.

"This is something that everyone has to face up to. To earn money and then grow up," said Yan. "These girls can't just be housewives. They certainly need more structure in their life. They need to have their friends and their social networking circles. Sometimes work doesn't just equal income. It means the realization of one's worth," the professor added.

According to Yan, students who married immediately after graduating, just as their peers, usually have no strong desire for material objects. They essentially owned nothing at that time. But five or six years later, after a time at work, their values would change and they would find the focus of their lives and figure out what they really needed.

Yan said that there was no right time to get married. It depended on the situation. "It's not a problem at all for college graduates who are physically and mentally mature enough to consider marriage. But realistically, it's hard for them to avoid the different pressures from mainstream society."

The professor encouraged young couples to learn to trust, persist, and compromise in different situations, which would help them manage a successful marriage and also life.