Backlash after DP proposed on pre-Wedding holiday

[Westendgoer]

I got engaged last month - DP proposed whilst we were on holiday prior to my friends Wedding. The holiday was in the same resort, but we went over a week before the wedding date as it was somewhere we’d always wanted to visit so made sense to combine the two.

I have had comments made by a couple of friends - not the bride - that this was a bit out of order and could have over shadowed the Wedding. I haven’t relayed to my DP, I don’t want it to taint the experience and personally I don’t see the issue with him proposing in the circumstances.

Do you agree with me that my friends have overreacted?

Good grief is no one else allowed to celebrate anything else in the two weeks leading up to a wedding? I question the mentality of some people and what they get upset by. Did the engagement overshadow the wedding? Of course not. It is fine.

I got what I wanted, I just find this painfully sad and funny at the same time.

I’d be so over the moon at getting married this wouldn’t bother me at all if I were the bride.
In fact, you could announce it at my reception and it STILL wouldn’t bother me because I’m not an it has to be all about me even on my wedding day.
Christ almighty when did weddings turn into this “shhh don’t say anything you might upset Kathy on her big day!” ??
Kathy’s a big girl - or she shouldn’t be getting married.
Wait until Kathy finds out about her groom and her maid of honour lol.

It seems a very strange thing to do if you share the same friendship group as the bride or groom. The only way it would not look like you were detracting attention away from the wedding would be to keep it quiet until a few weeks after the wedding but even then it’s a bit off.
Surely you would have preferred your proposal and engagement announcement to be a separate occasion than someone else’s wedding trip? I would have been cringing with embarrassment for you so I can understand your friends points of view.

.

Thank God not everyone goes for a showy attention-seeking Instagram performance of an engagement. Sounds practical and lovely to me, not lazy.

It's not piggybacking, they decided to make a holiday of the wedding destination. If their mates hadn't have decided to get married overseas they'd be on holiday somewhere else and he could have proposed there. It was a whole week before the wedding!

What a horrible judgement. Some
of your other responses to people are also quite unpleasant.

I initially wasn’t sure if your earlier post asking how you can propose without a ring was serious, but then I’ve seen some of your other posts and I assume that it was.

A proposal is a suggestion to do something - in this case, get married. A man or a woman can propose (with or without a ring) or a couple can simply have a discussion and decide that they want to get married.

You seem to be assuming that an engagement ring is necessary - it isn’t. I don’t wear one for a few reasons. Mainly, I don’t like the symbolic inequality of it - the idea that women are a prize whose possession is to be indicated by a ring. To me, it reflects the old-fashioned marriage economy where women were financially dependent upon men and the ring was an indication of an intention and ability to provide. I also don’t generally like engagement rings as jewellery - there are some nice ones but a lot of them are really similar (and not to my taste). Lastly, I just don’t like wearing a lot of jewellery and an engagement ring would be something else to remove and potentially lose during sport etc.

If other women want and like engagement rings, I have no issue with that whatsoever and I’m not judging them but I’m giving you these examples because it’s ridiculous to suggest that a lack of engagement ring is somehow a poor reflection on a man’s character. You seem to be very focused on the ring - an object - rather than the substance of the proposal - a person asking you to share their life with them. I take my husband’s lack of purchase of an engagement ring for me as a positive indication of his character- in that he knows me well enough to know I wouldn’t want one and is on the same page as me in terms of the values underpinning this preference.

Another thing - weddings don’t have to take many months to plan. Lots do (again, the modern wedding economy is something I don’t particularly like as I think much of it is overblown) but you can simply organise the right documents in a few weeks, invite a few friends if you wish (or not) and get married. Someone else has mentioned that the amount spent on a wedding is inversely proportional to its likely success. I know there are many exceptions to this, of course, and I’ve enjoyed celebrating with many friends at larger weddings, but it is a fact that money spent does not correlate with future happiness or marriage success.

@hungryduckbut it is literally her friends saying they were wrong … that’s the whole point of the thread.

It is so narrowminded to think the absence of of ring in a proposal is some kind of reflection of the character of the one proposing.

Close friends of ours had a very matter of fact conversation about marriage at home, resulting in them being engaged and - shock, horror - without a ring. Both very wealthy and could have afforded a big diamond but it’s just not either of them. Not everyone likes the traditional stuff like getting down on one knee, nor the patriarchal stuff like asking for the father’s hand in marriage. Not everyone likes jewellery - nor romance! An old colleague of mine wanted a crystal instead of a ring as she’s into all that. Fair enough. And, wait for it, sometimes even women ask the man.

I’ve got a beautiful engagement ring but they aren’t a thing in DH’s culture. He only got me one as I do happen to love jewellery. But I’m so bloody glad he didn’t ask my father for his permission. He didn’t because he knows this is not me at all, nor my parents.

Asking for permission* for the father’s hand in marriage! 😂 It’s early!

A great many lifelong happy marriages have started with 'lazy and lacklustre' proposals.

A proposal is about much more than performative gestures.

So what was the time line and how many people did you tell?
if it was -
arrive Saturday
proposal Sunday
tell a couple ofclose friends/family Monday (not connected to wedding )
bridal party arrive Saturday
wedding Monday
And there was no significant discussion during wedding part of the holiday then bride is unreasonable
If it was more like -
arrive Saturday
propose Friday
wedding guests arrive Saturday tell a group of them your engagement lots of discussion
wedding Monday
then I can see why the bride is miffed.

The only thing on your list I like is a takeaway but I can't say that 5 delicious tubs of different Sri Lankan curries would have added to any romance. I would have been too focused on the food to give a proper answer tbh.

Anyway it's odd to list a bunch of superficial and subjective stuff as evidence of "higher standards" - I have sky-high standards when it comes to my partner's character, his values, how he treats me on an everyday basis and our overall compatibility. Candles and decoration do not signify love.

Making normal conversation is not the same as making an announcement. Yes, no one should grab the mic to make a speech about their own life event. But when you converse with friends and family at a wedding you will inevitably have to answer the question "what have you been up to recently?" and it would just be odd to keep an engagement secret (and even odder to keep a visible pregnancy secret).

DP and I got engaged recently and shortly afterwards attended a friends' wedding. We didn't announce anything (not a huge deal to us and we want it to be as low-key as possible) but people asked what we'd been up to and we told them.

Another friend had got divorced since I last saw him. Another friend's mum had died a few months previously. Another friend got her dream job and will be moving country for it. None of this is stealing the bride's thunder - it's people catching up with each other, which is just what happens at weddings.

It’s the timing though.
Why not stay a week after the wedding? Could it be that after the excitement of a wedding the proposal would seem a bit flat? Whereas before theres a definite element of piggy backing off the wedding vibes.

We need more context. How much before the wedding did this happen?

I’ve never understood why people think that other people’s lives should be put on hold for their own life events.

My BIL and SIL had a strop because my other BIL proposed to his now wife about three weeks before their wedding, in a completely different location.

We really don’t. They were on holiday by themselves. The boyfriend was ready to propose and wanted to do do in a nice place, so he proposed. It wasn’t on the wedding day. They were probably back at work a few days after the wedding they attended. What’s he meant to do, wait until next year’s holiday? There’s a time in your life when most of your time off work and disposable income gets spent on attending other people’s stag/hen dos and weddings, so an extra holiday isn’t always on the cards. The OP need sex to be able to progress with her life, just like the bride.

I imagine they stayed the week before the wedding rather than the week after the wedding because that was what suited them best. At this time of year it might have been the difference between school holiday prices and term time prices.

Surely if you are having a destination wedding in a place that is far enough away that some of your guests decide to stay a week to make it worth the trip, you should be pretty happy they decided to come in the first place and not mind what else they decide to do whilst there. And the bride has not actually indicated that she is bothered by it at all.

*needs
i really should learn to proof read

Madness. They should have been delighted.

Why on earth is it sad? I had a plastic Claire's Accessories ring at the actual proposal and then we had a fabulous time at the jewellers designing my real one together. I think it's pretty sad you can't comprehend that people like different things and there is no objective standard of high or low / good and bad.

Yes, well, a few years later SIL went no contact with us because we reused her daughter's (very common, top 10) second middle name.

We're all now wishing someone had taken BIL aside and said that his pretty new girlfriend/fiancée's strop about other people's lives not being put completely on hold until their wedding might be a red flag and was he absolutely sure he wanted to marry her?