Almost four years after John and I got married, we might finally have another wedding in my family. Now, don't get too excited. My sister is not engaged. No proposal. No ring. But she is, apparently, getting married. She has picked out the dress. He has booked the temple. They have planned their honeymoon. I, however, have not purchased my wedding gift or bought plane tickets just yet, because after all, they're not engaged.
This situation has me reflecting on four years ago. John had just returned to New York to start full-time with PwC. We got engaged in late March of that year, and up until the moment he was kneeling in front of me asking me, I honestly did not know we were going to get married. I knew I wanted to marry him, but I had no idea whether the feeling was mutual. In fact, I had just spent a week in Peru with a good friend whose boyfriend had broken up with her the year before instead of proposing, even though he had already bought the ring. They were on their second round of dating at the time, and after spending the week with her, I was fatalistically certain that there was no way we would get married.
Being LDS, perhaps there's a temptation to have as short an engagement as possible, which leads to situations like the one my sister's in. How common is this phenomenon? Did you know you were getting married before you were engaged?
4 comments:
I vote yes, it's possible and perhaps common to not be engaged, but know that you are getting married. I experienced a similar happening myself.
And, it turned out ok so far. ha ha ha
Man, oh man, oh man! Will and I were discussing this very topic not too long ago. As we'll be celebrating our 4th anniversary in a few weeks, our story is slightly similar to yours. I knew that I wanted to marry Will and I was hoping he'd ask, but I had absolutely NOTHING planned. No dress, no date, no temple, no reception site. After he proposed (after 2 months of dating - yes, we did fit that little cliche), we then proceeded to plan the wedding. I hadn't even looked at wedding dresses online for fear of jinxing myself.
Flash forward to when my younger sister got married, only two years after I did, and she did things much like your sister. She had the dress in hand, the reception site booked, the photographer booked, most of the food picked out and had already called the temple - all before Logan had even proposed. She was real big on it being "official" before telling any family or friends, but I guess it didn't need to be official to plan everything???
My younger brother just got married in November. He and his wife did the same thing. He even called my parents in July to tell them he had decided to marry the girl, but he didn't officially propose until September. By the time he did, she had reserved the JS Memorial Bldg, had her dress bought and altered, had invitations, reserved the temple, etc.
I think it's weird and kind of backwards, but for whatever reason it seems to be the trend these days...
(Sorry for the novel, but your post about this is so timely for me!)
Well, I knew Martin had a ring about a month before he actually proposed but I waited to actually start planning until the ring was on the finger. Actually, he proposed and then 3 days later we went to Europe for 3 weeks. I figured if we could survive 3 weeks of traveling in a foreign country, we'd be good to go. Since he managed to find me a doctor in Austria (eye infection) and didn't flinch when I got food poisoning in the Czech Republic, it was safe to book the date :)
Eric and I knew we were getting married about 5 months before we got engaged. but we weren't planning to get married for a year, so we knew we weren't in a hurry. We took our time finding a ring, and just enjoying the time dating, with out the pressure of planning a wedding once you are engaged.
Then we found out Eric had a better vacation in February than June, so we moved our wedding date up. This meant we had to get engaged asap, so as not to have a crazy short engagement. (I think you need a minimum of 5 months). Eric proposed right after he picked up the ring from being sized. I knew he was going to do it, but it was wonderful just the same.
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