Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To find it hard to get excited about engagements....

60 replies

user1485342611 · 15/01/2018 17:55

When the couple have been living together for years, have two kids, a joint mortgage and seem to have no short or medium term plan to actually get married.

I mean, fine if they want to buy a ring and describe themselves as engaged. But the announcements on Facebook, the squeaky excitement from their friends, the engagement parties and presents....

AIBU to think it's all a bit OTT?

I'm not thinking about any couple in particular, but engagement announcements just aren't as exciting as they used to be years ago.

OP posts:
Original poster
user1485342611 · 16/01/2018 10:47

No need to be snippy Shhhhh2018. You seem to be reading things into my post that aren't there.

OP posts:
thecatsthecats · 16/01/2018 10:53

YABU - I think it's actually pretty shitty to treat someone's exciting news as 'meh' because it doesn't fit your criteria for being exciting.

I got engaged in October. I've been with my fiance ten years, longer than any other couple in my friend group.

Our wedding will be the 10-20th wedding people have been to by now, other people will be showing up with babies, and my hen do will no doubt be less of the mega ambitious 'we're doing this for the first time and we're all young let's get munted' affairs some of my other friends were.

And now you're saying it's barely worth celebrating at all Hmm

Honestly, I'm not grabby - one of the advantages of coming later in the order is that my fiance and I are well aware of the expense and inconvenience of weddings and are taking that into account in our planning big time! But I find the idea of our plans being 'meh' purely because of when we've chosen to make them would be very upsetting to come from a friend.

Show some bloody manners and be excited for them.

Oh and FYI - at least two of those starry-eyed marriages that you deem more worthy of excitement have ended in divorce already in my friendship group. If I were to set criteria on being excited for an engagement, I'd maybe think about how likely the couple are to fulfill that commitment than any other factor.

grannytomine · 16/01/2018 10:53

Slightly off topic but I was talking to a young man and congratulating him on his engagement. Lots of young women at work talking about how romantic it was, they had been on a big foreign holiday and he had proposed at a special location, beautiful ring. Of course all on Facebook.

He told me had had been told, by fiancee, when and where he was to propose, she also chose the ring he was to "surprise" her with. I honestly couldn't think what to say.

HurryUpPleaseItsTime · 16/01/2018 10:54

user (funny how goady posts always have a username like yours!) Shhhh isn't reading into things that aren't there really, is she?
You commented on people who have no 'forthcoming wedding'. Weddings tend to cost a bit - yes, even if you just go to the registry office it's still a few hundred - and lots of people have to save for these things. The date you would like isn't always necessarily available either. This is just another post to take a dig at those who do things a different way to the OP.
Personally I don't see how you can marry someone you haven't lived with (as used to happen) but horses for courses.

Shhhhhh2018 · 16/01/2018 10:54

@user1485342611 it's not snippy. It's a question? How quickly do you think couples should marry after announcing an engagement?

Spikeyball · 16/01/2018 11:36

Waiting a while after getting engaged isn't new. My parents were engaged for 3 years before they married in the 1960s. We were engaged for 2 years. I wouldn't be happy with getting engaged with the view of getting married 'eventually' but that is up to the couple.

Original poster
user1485342611 · 16/01/2018 11:39

I said no 'short or medium term' plans Hurry and the topic of why some users have a usernumber name has been well discussed on here.

Shhhh2018. I don't understand couples getting engaged and having no plans to get married or some vague idea that somewhere down the line they will get around to it. Is that okay with you?

OP posts:
Shhhhhh2018 · 16/01/2018 11:48

@user1485342611 do you see the irony of asking me if it's ok when you're the one who started a thread about people not having plans to wed in a particular timeframe after an engagement

noeffingidea · 16/01/2018 11:56

I don't get excited about any engagements, tbh. Happy for the couple, if course, but thats as far as it goes really.

Original poster
user1485342611 · 16/01/2018 11:58

No Shhh that's not what I started the thread about.

OP posts:
ClareB83 · 16/01/2018 12:02

Yes you did.

Also where are all my presents?!!! We got engaged and had drinks with friends to celebrate. I didn't even know engagement presents was a thing! Should I email everyone and demand presents now?!!

I mean we're getting married in two weeks (less than five months after getting engaged) so they could just double their wedding gifts!! Totally reasonable I reckon. Best man could fleece anyone who tries to leave without a sizeable donation.

Original poster
user1485342611 · 16/01/2018 12:06

No, I didn't

OP posts:
TheHolidayArmadillo · 16/01/2018 12:06

I'm not bothered about engagements unless the couple are actually planning a wedding. Time elapsed isn't too important, but if they're not setting a date I just view it as a fancy ring and a bit "meh".

DH and I had discussed getting married a couple of months into our relationship, we agreed that we would marry when the time was right. We didn't announce our engagement until we were ready to set a date and plan the wedding 4 and a half years later. I wasn't prepared to "be engaged" unless we were actually making moves towards marriage.

E.g. My best friend from my teenage years - I was thrilled for her when she announced her engagement. They had a date set within a couple of weeks of that, as everyone knew they would. SIL announced her engagement to her DP 6 years ago, and they've not moved past disagreeing about the venue (he won't get married outside a religious setting, she won't set foot in one. So no marriage.) - less enthusiastic about that announcement because the outcome was entirely predictable and the engagement doesn't actually mean anything.

mamamalt · 16/01/2018 12:32

I agree with what @thecatsthecats said. Perfect. I’m so sick of these threads. There seem to be a lot of them at the moment. Sick of hearing about other people’s good news. Yawn. Bore off. It doesn’t affect your life does it?! Either be happy for them or keep quiet.

Lottapianos · 16/01/2018 12:42

'You should have spoken about it, discussed at length, agreed the ins and outs to ensure you have a solid and long lasting marriage.'

Totally agree. Its one of the biggest decisions you will make together so a bit of discussion might be in order

'He told me had had been told, by fiancee, when and where he was to propose, she also chose the ring he was to "surprise" her with. '

My sister virtually did this with her ex man. Told him that she wanted a proposal within 6 months, and expected him to know by psychic powers what sort of ring she wanted and how much he was expected to spend on it (3 months salary as I recall) Shock It never happened and now she's married to someone else.

As usual, there's lots of people telling the OP to wind her neck in and its none of her business and how dare you be miserable and blahblahblah. It's a discussion board! People come on here to blow off a bit of steam and say stuff that they can't say in real life. You won't always agree with all of it. That's fine. You need a bit of debate otherwise this discussion board would just be lots of silent nodding and agreement. Bit dull.

Urubu · 16/01/2018 12:53

Shhhhhh2018 you say you got engaged and then found the venue 3 months later, that means you had a plan to get married and were organizing the details. It took a long time before the wedding but that is not the point OP is making.
What is strange is couples who declare that they are engaged but then don't do anything to plan a wedding. So basically same as before their engagement.

Cherrycokewinning · 16/01/2018 12:55

In my mind it’s something that’s really important at 22. At 32, it’s lovely news but just means a wedding soon and nothing more really

catsarenice · 16/01/2018 12:56

DP and I have been engaged for 10 years. Would love to get married but there always seems to be something more urgent that the money needs to be spent on. Im sure we'll get round to it eventually.....

Original poster
user1485342611 · 16/01/2018 12:56

Thanks Lotta.

In RL I do all the congratulating and looking surprised and delighted and all the rest. But if they've been living like a married couple for years and rearing children and have no particular plans to get married following the engagement, then I'm shrugging inside and wondering what exactly I'm supposed to be excited about.

Not sure why that makes me a miserably grumpy boots who goes around raining on people's parades.

OP posts:
Cherrycokewinning · 16/01/2018 12:57

Again, waiting a few years happens at 22, less so at 32 (or 35!) IME people tend to marry that year or the following so they can get going with children

Original poster
user1485342611 · 16/01/2018 12:58

Exactly Urubu.

OP posts:
AngelsSins · 16/01/2018 13:02

I can't get excited about anyone getting engaged to be honest, I find weddings and wedding talk extremely dull and often very self involved. I mean I can be happy for a couple, of course, but not excited or keen to talk about wedding cake and flowers.

JonnaSilvie · 16/01/2018 14:15

Oh dear, I fear I have broken the OP's acceptable timeframe of engagements to marriage.

DH and I didn't book our wedding until we'd been engaged for 18 months. The horror!

Because we were young, and needed to save money to actually pay for booking a wedding. So we spent 18 months in a "pointless" engagement. Why? Because my boyfriend bloody asked me! And I wanted to marry him.

Was I supposed to say, "No, not until we are physically booking a wedding venue" ?

AND it was a "big surprise" engagement. Champagne picnic with rose petals on a hill overlooking the local beach. Caught me completely off guard telling me we were going to the beach for a family BBQ. And my DH has never even had social media! So we wasted an opportunity to post everywhere about it, too.

Honestly, we may as well not have bothered! Hmm

ClareB83 · 16/01/2018 14:24

How can you live with yourself @JonnaSilvie?

The number of people you made feel "meh"!?

McTufty · 16/01/2018 14:26

If someone gets engaged but doesn’t actually seem to want to progress getting married then I find that a little odd - but how would I know that when they make the engagement announcement? People don’t generally also announce if and when they’re planing to have the wedding.

If they’re my friends and they’re excited about it then that’s good enough for me to want to celebrate. When we got engaged i was beside myself with happiness and I would be disappointed to find one of my friends was bitching about how they aren’t really bothered about it.

Also what’s this about it being a present grabbing exercise? We had an engagement party (combined with DH’s birthday party), we had people round to ours for drinks and ordered pizza in. A few people bought us a card, don’t think anyone bought us a gift, why would they? People on MN just seem to have a downer on wedding related matters which I have never come across in real life!

Swipe left for the next trending thread