WITH '90S COUPLES, WHEN THERE'S A WILL, THERE'S A WAIT.

Byline: Jennifer Weiner Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Forget Romeo.

Forget Juliet, too.

Forget dewy eyes and empty pockets, innocence and youth, and every stereotype of stage and screen that fills your head when you hear the word ``newlyweds.''

Meet the soon-to-be-marrieds of the '90s who are, on average, older, more experienced and seemingly a lot more careful than any generation before them.

Recent census data confirm what conventional wisdom has suggested for years: People getting hitched are getting older. The median age of a bride in the '90s is 24-1/2. The median age of bridegrooms is almost 27.

Take Jennifer Dragoun and Jeff Carver. She's 25, he's 26. They've been a couple forever - since they met as students at Cornell six years ago. She's in medical school; he's working full time, plus getting an MBA.

Standing in the middle of a bridal fair on a recent Sunday afternoon, amid samples of wedding cakes, ice sculptures and services offering limo rides, disc jockeys, honeymoon cruises and all things matrimonial, they talk as if their marriage were a foregone conclusion, as if they always knew they'd be together. As it is, they've lived together for two years, and they're now planning their wedding - for October 1997, when she'll be 26 and he'll be almost 28.

Why the wait? It's the economy, stupid.

``We had to plan around financial aid, around when we could get time off,'' Dragoun said.

``We wanted to be fairly close to some financial stability, and knowing where we'd be,'' Carver said. ``We wanted to wait until we had the money.''

And there were emotional issues. Carver's parents married at 21, divorced at 35. They're both remarried, but their experience left Carver perhaps more cautious than he would have been. ``I don't want to make the same mistakes they made. ... They're now each remarried happily, but why have to go around twice?''

Money. Security. Stability. Ask any about-to-be-wed duo who have been a couple for any length of time why they didn't get hitched sooner, and these are the answers you'll hear:

``We wanted to wait until we both had jobs.

We wanted to wait until I finished school. Until she finished school. Until we had our loans paid off. Until we could afford the kind of ceremony we wanted.''

Or, an emotional variation on the financial theme: ``My parents married young, then got divorced. I didn't want that to happen to me.''

Karen Moffett and Bob Salladino, both 24, also have been together for six years, and also are planning nuptials for '97.

``We knew pretty early on that we wanted to be together, but it was, `Let's wait until we finish school and until we have good jobs,' '' Salladino said. They both teach school now, so the wait will end soon. They've already been engaged for a year.

``By waiting so long, we were able to save. That was a big factor,'' Moffett said.

``We never see a 21-year-old bride anymore,'' said Pattie Winkler, the bridal buyer at Suky Rosan. ``We send 'em home!''

Winkler said the average age of brides at the upscale shop is in the 28-to-32 range. ``Our brides are professionals. They've been out on their own. They've had careers, they've traveled, they've gotten their college degrees and maybe a master's, and they've known their fiances for seven or eight years.''

``In general, it's still happening later in life,'' said Sam Preston, a University of Pennsylvania demographer. Preston did a study of college-educated women's marriage patterns from 1972 to 1986 and found that, while female college graduates were marrying faster than they had in the 1970s, most were marrying in their mid- to late-20s.

Why? Those who study social trends offer many of the same answers as the men and women who were eyeing tuxedos and gilded birdcage centerpieces: Money matters.

William Strauss, author of ``Generations'' and ``13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?'' said this isn't the first era in which couples have married later.

In the 1890s, the first year the census started keeping track, the median age of a first-time bridegroom was 26, and the median age of a first-time bride was about 22.

Then the age started dropping through the first half of the century. It reached its lowest point in 1956, when the median reached a low of 22-1/2 for men, 20 for women. Early marriages were viable back then, Strauss said, because jobs were available, and the living was easy. ``In the 1950s, people in their 20s did spectacularly well, and a one-wage household could get along just fine.''

Then the world began to change. Modern feminism was born. The Pill came out in 1962. Legal abortion followed, just over a decade later. Sexual experimentation became the norm. The average age of first-time-down-the-aisle brides and bridegrooms started rising, and the idea that you'd marry in your early 20s was called into question in movies such as ``The Graduate.''

`` `The Graduate' was a signal moment,'' Strauss said. ``When Elaine (the young bride-to-be) walked away from the altar, it was the end of an era, the end of the expectation that you'd date, then go steady, then get pinned, then get engaged, then get married.''

The median age of a spouse in a first marriage rose through the '60s, the '70s, and the '80s. Then came the '90s. The recession hit. And that, Strauss said, was truly the bottom line for the so-called 13th generation, who are in their 20s now.

``Marriage does not make the same economic sense it used to, especially for women,'' Strauss said. ``A woman doesn't need a man to get her out of the house.'' And, because of what Strauss said are the sharply declining economic futures of men born in the 1960s and 1970s, getting her out of that house might not even be a possibility.

``Single 13th-generation men have the lowest per-capita income than the nation as a whole experienced in the first three years of the Great Depression,'' Strauss said. ``Single males in particular are just not doing well - they're in a niche depression.''

According to Strauss, there are more single men living at home - that is, with their parents - than at any time since the Great Depression.

``Alternative living arrangements have gained acceptance,'' said Arlene Saluter, a Census Bureau demographic statistician who wrote the report on marriage. ``It's more acceptable now for people in their 20s to be living together, or living alone, or still living with their parents. There's nothing surprising about this trend. We've been following it for years,'' she said.

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Photo: Maureen Tilley, 24, left, tries on a wedding gown at Philadelphia's Suky Rosan shop. ``We never see a 21-year-old bride anymore,'' said Pattie Winkler, the upscale shop's bridal buyer. ``We send 'em home!''

Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire