"His gift of marriage instead of college....?" Where are you seeing that? Candy doesn't mention college at all, and she certainly doesn't imply she was going to go to college but now is getting married instead.
The point isn't that Candy found the idealized perfect knight of her dreams but she met someone quite different and tumbled for him instead. She fell for Bob in spite of the fact that he's not like "the movie star in her mind" (which he doesn't know about anyway).