How long is a “long engagement”?

[NewGardenProject]

Just that really,

Future FIL made a comment the other day about us having a long engagement and it annoyed me a little bit.

Our wedding is booked so it’s not like we are one of those couples who will be engaged for ages and ages with no wedding in sight.

It will be just under 22 months from proposal to wedding which I’ll admit is longer than I wanted but it’s all we could get between the venue we want and other stuff going on. I still feel it’s a reasonably normal timeframe though.

When does an engagement become “long” to you?

Ours was 5 years! That's long!!😂

LOL 22 months is NOT a long engagement. 4-8 years is long. 9 years plus is very long. Less than 4 years is not long (IMO.)

2 years plus. I think

I said 18mnths+ before I read the thread.
DH & I were engaged for 6 months.

I was engaged for 24 years (ring, living together, joint bank account for living expenses). We only got married when it became more advantageous / convenient. Now married 14 years so not repenting at leisure, either.

22 months seems quite precipitous to me!

We will be 4 years by the time we get married. Just got engaged but with 2 kids in nursery we need to save and that ain't gonna happen at the moment.

I know we could do a quick registrar office but it's not what either of us want.

I would say less then 2 years is a short engagement but I'm from Ireland where ot takes quite a while to plan weddings

12 years so far, here. Mortgage, redundancy, IVF, a child (joyfully!) and Covid have taken a toll on the finances, but it’s difficult close family members that has ‘really’ made it impossible to just run off to the registry office.

We were engaged for two years.
I worked in the wedding industry for a while and it was perfectly normal to have 2 year engagements for popular venues etc.

I think the situation has changed. Years ago, you got engaged, and generally got married within the year or so. The engagement was the trigger for planning a wedding. Two years was definantly considered a long engagement.

Today, people get engaged, but don’t plan to marry straight away. Buying houses and/or children come first, and the wedding is put on hold, due to costs etc.

Anything over a year is long. What a lot of people are describing here don’t sound like what I consider an engagement. An engagement is a plan to be married soon, not a semi-permanent life stage.

Also, in the past, people married sooner so they weren’t ‘living in sin’.

More than two summers

Mine was 10 years so I couldn't possibly say 😂

Longer than it takes to plan and book a wedding is a 'long' engagement imo.

I agree with you when people say they are “engaged” but have zero wedding plans and just wear a ring for years.

Our wedding is booked though. Save the dates have gone out and contract signed. It’s happening. It’s just our venue of choice couldn’t accommodate us next summer as we wanted and we aren’t in a position to marry before then, for various reasons.

But our engagement WAS the trigger for planning a wedding, we were out looking at venues within a few weeks of the proposal…

Yes, yours sounds like an actual engagement. Just a long one. 🙃

More than 4 years.

right now, lots of places don’t even have availability until 2024 earliest, so 2 years will be the minimum for most

Regarding above comments we never intended a long engagement. I'm daft DH didn't propose for 9 years as he didn't want a long engagement but after we got engaged he got made redundant, we went travelling, moved to London then I got pregnant a few months after that. She was 8 when we got married and made a lovely flower girl. Ppl are so judgy and I really wouldn't care what they think. Our wedding was lovely and just what we wanted. Only regret is my Dad passed away before it in the 2nd lockdown.

We got engaged 30 years ago. Still not married. Don't think we'll bother now.

@DorotheaHomeAlone
It may not be what you consider to be an engagement, but it was for us. We intended to be married, we behaved as if we intended to be married ( faithful, supportive , mutual) . It was a contract, and in previous ages, such a contract was regarded as legally binding. A pre contract was grounds for an annulment of a subsequent marriage, which is why kings and princes desperately tried to discover that the wife they no longer fancied had been pre contracted to someone else!

I don’t know why I found your comment a bit dismissive? If I was thirty years younger, I’d probably be asking you who made you the arbiter.

That's not long ffs

In fact not I'm daft

Why does it matter?

Matters to be I guess because we have been together nearly 7 years and waited to get engaged when we were actually ready to marry (bought our house already etc) so I suppose it’s some insecurity around people taking it seriously or something idk