It is widely held that secret (‘urfi) unions are on the rise among Egyptian youth. Some have argued that they are merely a legal and religious cover for extra- or pre-‘marital’ sex among young people. Others contend that they are a response to the prohibitively high costs of conventional unions because the couples do not set up a joint household and because their parents remain uninvolved. However, these existing accounts rely primarily on the analysis of public discourse or second-hand reports about ‘urfi marriages. In contrast, this paper relies on data collected in the course of twenty semi-structured interviews with young men and women who are currently in ‘urfi unions and who reside in Cairo and Minya. As such, it is the first full-length study of ‘urfi marriage that draws on interviews conducted with individuals who have actually entered into such unions. In this paper, I first describe my respondents’ decision-making processes, the circumstances of their unions, their partner’s socio-demographic characteristics, and their familial aspirations for the future. My findings show that the parties to these secret unions aspire to enter into conventional marriages someday. This raises the question of why actors who hold normative aspirations engage in non-normative actions. I explain this paradox by arguing that these actors operate in a context where marriage continues to be socially valued, at the same time that marrying openly remains out of their reach. As a result, means that deviate from those sanctioned by mainstream society are found to achieve the ends of a committed sexual partnership. I also find that marriage expenses constitute a real obstacle to marriage, and the desire to avoid the costly requirements of conventional marriage emerges as a key motivation for ‘urfi unions. This suggests that marriage has become a status category, one that is achievable (openly and in a timely manner) only by socioeconomically privileged groups in Egyptian society. Thus I argue that marriage constitutes a new demarcator of class in Egypt today.