to not understand people announcing that they're 'Getting Engaged'.

[atthewelles]

I mean, either you've agreed between you that you want to get married or you haven't. Tellling everyone that you're 'going to get engaged at Christmas' or that 'we're going to Paris to get engaged' doesn't really make sense. Surely its more exciting to wait until you have the ring and then make a general announcement that you 'are engaged' instead of letting everyone know in advance and then expecting them to get excited and ooh and aah when you appear with a diamond flashing on your finger.

I'm not giving out about it, I just don't understand why people want to take the excitement and surprise out of the occasion like this.

I think if you go on about something in advance and give people information that really should be held back until you actually have something to announce all the excitement goes out of the occasion.

I used to work with a girl who, from the moment she got married, wasalways saying to colleagues 'Oh, I think I might be pregnant', 'Oh, I'd better not have a drink. I might be pregnant' 'I was doing some painting at the weekend and then realised I shouldn't be stretching like that because I think I might be pregnant'.

When she did eventually announce that she was pregnant it was hard not to just say 'oh yeah. Whatever' .

It's the same with people telling you they're getting engaged for their birthday, discussing what kind of ring they'd like etc etc and then you're supposed to get all excited when they 'announce' I'M ENGAGED!!

LOL.Gymboy. I remember those girls - now long since married to someone completely different and would probably struggle to remember the name of their first 'fiance'.

I agree LaQueen. I think some engagement rings are bought as a 'keep her quiet for the moment' gesture and the engagement drifts on for a while and either the bloke dumps her or she sees sense and dumps him.

YABU.

DH took me to Paris, we knew he was going to propose to me there. I'd chosen the ring and our close friends knew why we were going.

I honestly couldn't give a flying fuck about what other people think of the technicalities of it.

It was special moment between us and we will have that memory when we are old. We have been through some very tough times since then, but that memory can still make me smile.

We got married 4 months later.

Bollocks to grumpy pedants! I don't believe it affected anyone else in the bloody slightest.

YANBU

I don't get it either. Why announce 'oh we're getting engaged at christmas'?. Smacks of attention seeking. Why not just get engaged now?

Also, I'd be gutted if I'd known when my H was going to propose. I find it weird that people go ring shopping before the event. Shouldn't it be a surprise?

Pobble- I think it's up to the couple since it only involves and affects them.

Do you think there should be a law?

If dear friends told me they were getting engaged at Xmas/valentine's. I'd just be happy for them. I wouldn't waste my time thinking "well technically, since you are both in agreement on the matter of matrimony, you are already engaged since engagement indicates intent".

I would just think "good for you, what nice news".

I think when a couple are engaged but with no actual wedding plans in sight, then I suspect that the girl was far more keen, than the bloke...and he's fobbed her off with a 'Well, we can get engaged for now, but I don't want to set a date for a couple of years

This. Although the longest engagement I've known was 23 years. In the end, most of us came to the conclusion that he'd lost the will to hold out any longer.

I can understand a certain amount of "hopefully" so far as wedding dates are concerned. ds1 and his df are currently separated by the Atlantic. Their wedding has been provisionally set for this autumn but the actual date depends on when her visa is approved. But if they were both UK citizens and resided here the date would have been set shortly after their engagement.

atthewelles the girl you worked with reminded me of a colleague of mine.

We were pregnant at around the same time, but she had already found out the sex of her baby, and named him, months before he was born, and told everyone all about it.

We didn't do that, so when DS was born and I got in touch with work to tell them about him, our colleagues did discuss it a bit more than they had with our colleague's baby. You know the sort of thing "Fake has had her baby." "Oh, what did she have? What did she call him? Oh, lovely" etc.

That didn't happen really with our other colleague because it was just "Helen's had Josh." "Oh, good."

Helen was apparently quite upset that people were 'more excited' about my baby than hers, but I don't think they were, just that they knew all the things people normally ask about in advance of her son's birth and they didn't with mine.

It didn't help that in the run up to our maternity leave starting I did get quite a lot of "not long now until you find out what you're having" and "ooh, if it's a girl you can call her after me" etc. Which they couldn't do so much with Helen because we all knew what she was having. She did get a few "not long now's" etc but there wasn't the same banter about names and sex etc with her because she'd already found out and told everyone.

I dread the thought of getting married but would like to be engaged. I guess I see it as a private promise of commitment. I view the wedding as a bit of a showy event and marriage as a tad pointless although I can see how it works for other people.
I feel bad for DP because I know he'd like a big wedding but its just not for me, I'm far too shy. Apparently he wants to propose though.

I think if you want to have a nice memory of it, you can get engaged and then go somewhere to celebrate afterwards, it's still a nice thing to do

thingmajigs a wedding doesn't have to be showy, you can get married with a couple of witnesses and be done with it

A law? Wtf?

Yes there should be a law....

I like the surprise. H went out, bought a ring, surprised me by proposing. Same with having a baby. We didn't find out the sex. Totally agree with FakePlasticLobster's previous post about knowing too much. A friend of mine had the 4D scan, found out the gender, we all knew its full name. Obviously it was great that she arrived and mum and baby were healthy but the reaction wasn't quite the same.

I'm not saying we weren't happy, but why the need to share everything? Just because we can.

I'm aware some of that may be controversial.

YouOldSlag Surely an engagment is meant to be an announcement of your intention to get married.
Why would you also announce your intention to announce your intention to get married? .

And of course there's nothing wrong with flying off somewhere to celebrate your engagement. But I genuinely don't understand the concept of going somewhere to 'get engaged'.

To be honest, if it was all planned in advance I'd find it hard to keep a straight face when the bloke produced the ring and spoke his rehearsed lines.

Yes sooper I think that's what we might possibly do but I know DP would feel like he had missed out by not having a normal wedding. Anyway, my interest lies solely in the honeymoon, not the wedding.

...but I know DP would feel like he had missed out by not having a normal wedding

Cheer yourself with the knowledge that honestly, there's no such thing as a normal wedding. Some people have what is probably best described as a conventional wedding but then one couple's conventionality is another couple's idea of sheer hell.

I agree Horizon. And to be honest, if I wanted an expensive wedding and knew I would need to wait a couple of years to save up, I think I would just hold off actually announcing the engagement and choosing a ring until nearer the time.

We decided that we wanted to get married, but we decided to wait 3 months before buying the ring/telling anyone, in case one of us changed our mind!

There was no romantic proposal, just a conversation over coffee in Mcdonalds ( I was only 23 ) We've been married 16 years this year

I got trapped by one of those wedding forums. I went in there because someone was asking for advice about photography and then, like a rabbit in car headlights, found myself transfixed. What amazed me was the number of years that people planned to exist in an engaged state. In some cases, weddings were being planned 5 years hence.

Ironically, despite all those years to go, some brides were already getting terribly stressed about fine, but awfully trivial details. What I couldn't understand was why you'd want to plan a wedding that'd take 5 years to save up for when a very nice, but affordable day could be enjoyed so much sooner. But I guess if the wedding day is more important than the marriage, you can lose sight of the point of it all.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of these brides "planned to get engaged" for ages too.