"I used to think that was the way life goes: you get older, you get married," she says.

But now, in her 20s, she's started to rethink those priorities, becoming more focused on her career, and wanting to be more independent before marriage. That means finishing uni, and finding a good job.

The fairytale isn't over, it's just had an update.

"I think weddings cost a lot of money and that could be spent elsewhere," she says. "Having a smaller ceremony would benefit the both of us in the future."

It's the kind of economic thinking she intends to continue through her married life - and she says she doesn't want to rely on her marriage to give her anything.

Hurley's changing views are reflective of a broader shift among Australian women who are rethinking traditional views of marriage.

For generations, marriage has been not just a love contract, but also an economic one, especially for women. Now women are starting to see marriage as less important, and couples that do want to get married are doing so later in life - and turning to civil celebrants to conduct their ceremony.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows the average age at which Australians get married for the first time has increased for both men and women over the past 40 years.

In 1971, the median age at the time of a man's first marriage was 23. For women, it was 21.

As of 2019, men who married for the first time were 30 years old on average, while women were on average slightly younger at 29.

For couples in same-sex marriages, the median age for men in 2019 was 39, and for women it was 36.

Canberra celebrant Elena Forato has seen the trend take shape in real time.

"I'm certainly finding that it's couples in their late 20s and early 30s [who are coming to me]," Forato says.

"More often than not, they have been together for a decent chunk of time: it could be seven years, it could be eight, or some get married to celebrate 10 years of being together. They seem to be the majority that I have seen."

But people marrying later in life, and after spending a significant number of years together, is not the only trend Forato has observed.

Many more people are now choosing a civil service, rather than a church ceremony. About 80 per cent of couples getting married in Australia, according to ABS provisional data for the second quarter of 2020, now opt for a service performed by a civil celebrant.

Asking loved ones to officiate a wedding is also becoming increasingly common.

"Not every couple, but certainly a sprinkling of couples, will immediately say to me when we start talking about the type of ceremony I might do for them, that they don't want anything religious," Forato says.

"They will say it to me in two or three different ways ... so, that's obviously what people feel now, that for them it's not really the religious ritual they're after.

"There is just so much flexibility around what you can do in a civil ceremony. The legal requirements are actually quite minimal. Yes, you have to tick off a few things before you can do it, but the rest is around the actual ceremony that you can create."

Marriage nowadays sits atop shifting sands, at least as far as faith is concerned.

Increasingly, weddings are now defined by the couple's personalities, and for some it is more about the content of the ceremony and being surrounded by loved ones than it is about the tradition.

Sally Bishop, 21, is a practising Christian who grew up with a church-based faith she believed expected her to marry young and start a family soon afterwards. But she has since begun to question that outlook.

"As a kid, I think my views were based around what the church would think about marriage," Bishop says.

"It was like, 'You get married, you have kids, you live happily ever after,' and that's how I thought of marriage as well.

"As I developed in my faith and matured, I started to see that it's not a big deal if [marriage] doesn't work out perfectly, [that] it is better to develop your relationship with someone before you dive right in."

While it isn't typical practice for her Christian faith, Bishop has also thought about choosing a family member to officiate when she marries.

"I think it would be nice for a family member to officiate the marriage, like my brother or my mum, because I think they are still within my faith - but not so much that they are a pastor or a priest," she says.

"I think it's great to be in a position where I can think about marriage more realistically. Society has changed so much in that way, where the pressure [to marry] - even on our parents to a certain extent, but certainly on our grandparents - meant they had to ... because it just wasn't proper to live with someone if you weren't."

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While gender inequality remains a problem, women in the 21st century are more free - both financially and socially - to prioritise other parts of life than marriage.

"[Previously] if you lived with a man who wasn't your husband, it was looked down upon. Nowadays we can do that without any judgment, [which] is great because it means we can develop our relationships properly," Bishop says.

For many couples, marriage isn't a necessity for a relationship to be considered real or serious, nor is it a measurement of success in life.

Hurley is not opposed to getting married in the future, but views it as an extra benefit to an already stable relationship.

"A lot of society has changed. Women have a lot more independence, and marriage back then, women would sometimes use it to get financial support ... whereas now it is just something added on to our lives," she says.

"If it is something you want to do, you can do it, but I don't think it's as necessary as it was back then. I think it would just be something extra added into my life, something positive."