Julia Roberts is not made-up for this movie to appear any older than she is in real life, so one would assume that her character (Maggie) is in her early 30's. But think about the video of Maggie's first wedding, the one where everyone's dressed as hippies, etc. Even if you take extreme liberties -- say that wedding was taking place in the mid-seventies and that Maggie was 17 or 18 years old at the time -- that would still make her at least 40 years old in present day when the story takes place. One possible "out" to explain this is that the story doesn't take place in present time, but rather sometime in the 1980's. But if that's the case there are other inconsistencies (e.g. the rather late model car that Richard Gere's driving) that come into play.