Desperate times call for desperate measures.
The Great War commenced with so many casualties in the history of the Shinobi World. According to the kages' calculations, a third of the Five Great Shinobi Nations population is needed to reinstate the ninja villages to its full potential. Hence refugees and alien residents were warmly embraced into the settlements and were trained to a life of a warrior- anything to speed up the Ninja Re-population Program.
It was not enough to make the crippled hidden villages going though. Ninja personnel were few and old outnumbered the young. The ruling landlords after a series of meetings wih the kages revised the marriage code of ninjas so that ninjas as young as sixteen were allowed to marry without their guardians' consent. This revision enabled Temari of Suna to marry Nara Shikamaru despite her brothers' open disapproval. Konoha's council not so secretly hope the young newlyweds produce offspring soon. Human resource was the most valuable national resource at the time.
The new marriage code was without repercussions; Polygamy and incest, though not expressly forbidden under the code as it was long practiced by some powerful clans, were frowned upon; Illegitimate children were discriminated; Girls unmarried after their eighteenth birthday were practically spinsters; And arranged marriage was the norm. This was the parents' protest against the underage-no-guardians'-consent-required-marriage-p olicy. All these regressions happened the first year of the revised marriage code's implementation. It would seemed that the hidden villages' settlers held on to old customs to make sense of a post-war shinobi world.
So mothers were in a hurry to wed off their daughters. Only women past child-bearing age were safe from dealing with matchmakers who were too happy to be suddenly in demand. For it was a fact that even widows, and there are quite a number of them after the war, subscribed to arranged marriages if only to find a spouse capable of feeding their children. Traditionalists prescribed the proper way to be married- a matchmaker is hired to find prospects and a couple of witnesses, usually members of the villages' council, are paid to attend negotiations on the bride's dowry and marriage solemnization.
Some parents scout marriage prospects themselves though. That way they could save the matchmaker's fee and add it to the dowry instead. A lot of economical households have marriages this way, and most of these marriages turned out harmonious, if not happy.
If they were lucky, if the couples are in love, they could do away with the matchmaking and dowry negotiations. That's what Temari did. Ran all the way from Suna and from a hideous bridegroom with a wedding dress tucked under her arm, bribed a number of council members, and grab Shikamaru straight to the registry.
And if they're specially lucky, they have no relatives to interfere with their choice in a spouse. Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto were specially lucky in that respect. Haruno Sakura only a tad lucky. While her parents could be meddlesome, she could get her way with them if she put her mind to it. Her parents were itching to wed her off to a landlord. She was too. Itching to marry the last Uchiha that is. They were both 16, going on 17- ripe for marriage.
Of course, Sasuke had to ruin it. He dropped the bomb over ramen one day.
"I'm engaged to Hyuuga Hinata."
Naruto choked on his ramen and Sakura laughed at the Uchiha's attempt to pull their legs. But Sasuke was dead serious. She stopped laughing to see he was not joking at all.
"I'm engaged to Hyuuga Hinata," he repeated.
Sakura considered choking on her ramen on purpose but her ramen bowl was overturned already- the soup spilling on the counter, the bowl starting to crack from the pressure of her one clenched hand.