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 agree Pandemoniaa spending years planning and saving for a big wedding makes no sense to me. Nine times out of tens those overplanned weddings are actually identical to 95% of the weddings we've all attended and have no spark of originality, no personal touches and nothing that any of the guests will remember afterwards.
Give me a nice individual type wedding with a few quirky touches and a bit of imagination any day.

There is one good wedding forum in amongst the fluff, that will tell you like it is. Many a newly engaged has had a temper tantrum at not getting the answer they expected.

OP- our engagement was just for us. Because I'd been married before, DH to be wanted to check I hadn't been put off marriage for life so dropped massive hints and we looked at rings online.

We then went to Paris where he proposed. We both knew this was going to happen. Our families sort of had a big clue. But it wasn't until we came back that we flashed the ring and told people.

Every couple's history is different. We've been married seven years and you are the first person ever to suggest the manner of out engagement was technically incorrect.

I really don't care! We're happy and it was lovely. There isn't a rule book, nor should there be.

YABU.

I do agree that many couples put more effort into their wedding day than they do into marriage.

I am also suspicious of engagements that last many years.

But it was technically incorrect Youoldslag. No big deal or anything. If you liked it that's great but you were really already engaged when you went to Paris, you just formally announced it and wore your ring when you came home.

LaQueen you forgot the lovely chair coverings, the bouquets for the mothers, the standing up and clapping when the B&G enter the dining room, the Best Wishes email from some celeb or politician who vaguely knows the bride's parents .....

I've never heard of that before, it is a bit strange. I get the announcing you are engaged bit, but announcing the planning of the engagement...?

Wrt long engagements, DP proposed in October last year but we're planning on getting married next year so will have a 2 year engagement. It's not to plan anything extravagant though, we're having a fairly reasonable non showy day, but it will take us that long to save up.

"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? "

the decision to marry(a lifelong commitment to share your life with someone) should be a surprise? really? isn't it far more logical to find out if your partner is on the same page as you relationship wise instead of springing a proposal on them? i said it upthread and i'll say it again. if a proposal came as a surprise to me it would be a pretty big sign that my partner and I had not been communicating well at all and that we were not at the same stage in the relationship. i find nothing appealing about having the decision to agree to marry made for me by someone else without any discussion with me.

'technically incorrect' is, forgive me, a bit of a silly thing to say.

A couple of people including me have pointed out that, in some cultures/religions, an engagement is not actually just a verbal decision to get married, it's a legal or religious ceremony.

I am perfectly ok with that being an obscure bit of trivia. But it does show it's not really as simple as you're making out, that everyone in the whole wide world is going to be exactly like you and there's a technical 'correct' and 'incorrect' way to view being engaged.

"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? "

Booyhoo
The decision to marry(a lifelong commitment to share your life with someone) should be a surprise? really? isn't it far more logical to find out if your partner is on the same page as you relationship wise instead of springing a proposal on them? i said it upthread and i'll say it again. if a proposal came as a surprise to me it would be a pretty big sign that my partner and I had not been communicating well at all and that we were not at the same stage in the relationship. i find nothing appealing about having the decision to agree to marry made for me by someone else without any discussion with me.

Totally misunderstood what I said.

I wanted the proposal to be a surprise. Where did I say we hadn't talked about marriage? We knew we wanted to get engaged, I just didn't know when it would happen.

Talk about jumping to conclusions!

I am reading some of these stories and cringing. It's just all so attention seeking, self aggrandising and immature.
A member of my family went on holiday and announced they would be getting engaged but it would be a surprise as she didn't know where or which day he was going to do it. Then he asked her and produced a ring that wasn't an engagement ring but a ring which she had chosen which was to show she was engaged before she went to pick her proper engagement ring. We were then subject to nauseating emails and facebook messages about how moving the whole experience was and how surprised she was.
After they were married which unsurprisingly was a giant production she phoned round the family to annouce they were now officially trying for a baby. That ideally she would be pregnant by x and the baby born in y.
They think they are so classy it's hilarious.

"Talk about jumping to conclusions! "

so you had already agreed to get married you just wanted to pretend to be surprised when he went through the motions of 'asking you to marry him' when in actual fact he knew the answer, you knew the answer and it wasn't a surprise at all? can you tell me why pretending to be surprised was so important to you?

Does it matter?

I can't imagine anything I'd like less than a 'surprise' proposal with a ring someone else chose. OTOH DH quite enjoyed it so I was perfectly happy to do it for him. I do not see why this matters.

Surely the cringey thing is announcing it in a way that suggests other people should give you masses of attention?

I think some people want to have as much fuss and make as many announcements as possible.

When DH and I got engaged he wanted to do a "proper" get down on one knee proposal and I wanted to pick the ring I was going to wear for ever until my fingers got too fat. Also we both felt that agreeing to get married should be a discussion rather than DH asking and me accepting or declining. So we had the discussion and picked the ring together about 2 months before DH asked my dad for permission and then proposed. But we didn't tell anyone before then apart from me warning my dad so DH's phonecall didn't come out of the blue .

YABNU.

I also don't understand people who get engaged and then say we are planning to get married in the summer of 2015.

I agree I would want to pick the ring, but I think once you've decided, just go off and do it. Having a plan to get engaged on a particular day/week is a bit daft. And personally I find engagement parties daft and outdated.

Sorry, I'm making no sense. In an ideal world, the proposal itself would be a bit of a romantic surprise, either planned, or spontaneous, but I'd prefer to be able to chose the ring myself after I'd been asked, and had accepted.

The next step would be to announce it to family and friends, together, probably once we had the ring, but not necessarily. There would be no party and no nonsense.

Then the wedding should happen within a year.

I think 2 years to save up and plan a wedding is fine fellatio, I don't understand the problem you have with understanding why? Weddings are expensive and even a small wedding can cost a few grand, some people need that time to save up.

I don't think I really want to as you're being quite rude.

Yes I stuck a pretend smile on my face, pretended to look shocked and said yes. He pretended to be shocked at my reply.

We'd got to the point in our relationship where we had discussed marriage and children. I has no idea when he would propose, I genuinely thought we would have a baby first.

So yes I was surprised. Get over it.

OK, so I suppose up to two years is acceptable on those grounds. But people who stay engaged for years on end with no plans to actually get on with it look a bit silly. Why don't they just settle for living together? The marriage thing is clearly not that important to them, if they have not felt compelled to do it after for four or five years of supposed engagement. There is no law that says you must have a big expensive white wedding, after all. Some people are obsessed with getting engaged at the first opportunity just to get a ring on their finger and get ownership of their man.

the decision to marry(a lifelong commitment to share your life with someone) should be a surprise? really? isn't it far more logical to find out if your partner is on the same page as you relationship wise instead of springing a proposal on them? i said it upthread and i'll say it again. if a proposal came as a surprise to me it would be a pretty big sign that my partner and I had not been communicating well at all and that we were not at the same stage in the relationship. i find nothing appealing about having the decision to agree to marry made for me by someone else without any discussion with me.

Absolutely spot on Booyhoo. All this stuff about waiting for the man to surprise you is bollocks.

The actual giving of the ring was an important moment to me and DH. Should I have checked about the technicality of being given an engagement ring whilst already engaged? Or should I just unclench and enjoy life without pedantry?

When I was a travel agent I booked a couple on a break to Paris, as they were going to "get engaged" there?! I took their booking and wished them well but genuinely think that they missed the point tbh