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Relationships

Help me understand this - proposal

153 replies

CoffeeThroughAnIvDrip · 07/10/2019 14:10

DP and I have been together many years and have 3 young DC’s together.
When we first started dating, we had a light hearted chat about weddings, and way back then, I was still romanticising the idea of the ‘big white wedding’. I used to dream of a designer dress and matching shoes, a huge array of guests, just a massive deal made out of it all. DP was never of the same view, and stated he didn’t see the point in wasting so much money on one day, and thought people should just cheaply elope or have a registry office do instead.

As the years past (and DC’s added to our family) I ‘woke up’ and realised that I no longer wanted that big wedding, that marriage itself was way more important to me than the wedding day (as it should be!), and I ended up telling DP about how my views had changed and had become much more, simple, for lack of a better word.

Another year or so went by, with each of us talking about engagements and weddings and marriage (not always prompted by me!), and we still wasn’t engaged and no closer to being so.
One evening, after yet another talk about getting engaged, I was browsing rings online. Found one I fell in love with, and we ordered it.

It then came to light that DP’s views on weddings had changed since we first met. He’s now no longer comfortable with the idea of a registry office wedding or eloping, and instead wants something small with just close friends and family at a little venue close to our home. He wants our DC’s included in the ceremony, a car to arrive in etc - so quite the backtrack on what I’d been told years ago!

Anyway, the ring has now been sitting in our bedroom for four months. I’ve told DP I don’t want a huge deal made out of the proposal, I don’t want the thrills or the surprise (not that I’m going to be surprised in any way, shape or form since we already have the ring!), I don’t want elaborate planning having gone in to it, I just want us to be able to sit down and say ‘yes, we’re committed to each other, we’re now engaged and we’re going to knuckle down and start saving for a small wedding’. Done. That’s all I want and need. But dp has been insistent on doing something ‘proper’ for the proposal - apparently he WANTS to propose and experience the moment of doing it, and not just decide we’re engaged after a conversation.

So, we agreed no money would be put in to the proposal, because I think something lovely and romantic can be done at home, if the romance and that ‘moment’ is what he really wants to experience, he can definitely create that in our lounge (cheap flowers, a nice home cooked dinner, my favourite music playing, ask me to marry him, boom, sorted).
4 months I’ve been waiting (well, 4 months of having the ring, but I’ve actually been waiting years by this point), wondering what he could possibly be planning that couldn’t have happened since the ring arrived in June.

Well, it was my birthday last week. DP got me some amazing gifts which I’m so thankful for, got me a lovely card from the DC’s, but I didn’t receive a card from him. He knows I love to get a card from him, but is notorious for writing them out then misplacing them (he literally has a stack of birthday, Christmas and valentines cards that he never gets round to giving me because he always forgets where they end up 🙄 he also has stacks for his mum and his sister too!) but this morning, whilst sorting through our washing and putting some bits away, I came across an envelope in his sock drawer that appeared to have a birthday card inside, addressed to me. Given his history with cards, I assumed this was yet another card he’d forgotten about, so I opened it.

The card on the front read ‘to my fiancé on your birthday’, inside he’d written a birthday message then at the bottom wrote ‘now it’s official’.

I’m so confused and frankly, quite upset. We’ve had so many talks about engagement and marriage, especially over the last year, he knows I don’t want a fuss made and am more than happy to have a ‘no huge expenditure, no thrills’ proposal and an equally cheap wedding day, so to learn he was going to propose last week at home, likely after we’d got the DC’s to bed (perfect! No fuss!) is like a slap round the face to discover that for some reason, he’s chosen not to do it.

I don’t know what to think or feel.

(Please don’t comment about how precarious my situation is having dc before marriage. I am aware of the ramifications should we ever break up - so I’m not looking to be hounded at from that perspective.)

Just looking to see if anyone can unpick this trail of events and maybe help give me an insight in to what he’s thinking. I do plan on speaking to him at some point about what I’ve found, but wanted to offload on here first!

Thanks!

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Witchinaditch · 08/10/2019 12:34

18months is how long it takes to plan a wedding ussually as venues get booked in advance, but really depends on what type of wedding you want of course you could have a quick wedding next week if you wanted.. I don’t think 2 years is unreasonable to save ect