We didn't "rush" to get married. At all. We had been waiting for the perfect scenario to come up for a year, and it did. To have passed it up would mean waiting at least another year. I completely understand the accusations from people "reading between the lines" that I did this deliberately to take it away from her, but I just didn't and all you'll have is my word.
Also, I didn't even know this was that important to her, it was more of a fact that had been mentioned several times, she never said anything along the lines of "it's really important to me".
In general, I would never choose to do things that had any risk of making my friends unhappy, however not taking this rare opportunity would have made me and my husband unhappy - does that count for nothing? I appreciate I was wrong and I have apologised for that, but I don't think it makes me an asshole for doing it in the first place.