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?

We actually joked ourselves in the speeches about it being the longest engagement ever. Surely it is more of a guarantee you are taking it seriously. A lot of our guests thought it was lovely we were finally getting married. Please do not give a fuck what anyone thinks.

I've been engaged for 11 years. In that time we've bought a house and had 2 kids. I just can't bring myself to spend loads of money on a wedding when it could go on the kids. I wish we could just do it online tbh 😂

Anything over 2 to 3 years.

We were engaged for around 18 months before getting married. Like you, we had to wait a bit for a date at our desired venue. It felt long, but is probably on the shorter end of things now.

We started planning our wedding very quickly after getting engaged and had it booked within a month or so. To me, getting engaged means you’re actively planning to get married, which suggests you start organising whatever kind of wedding or marriage ceremony you want. It does seem that for a lot of people, it’s become almost
like an expected, established relationship stage, between merely partnered and actually married, and so they are engaged for a very long time (I mean years & years here), rather than the brief(ish) in-between nature of it in the past.

Over 18 months

Getting married only costs a couple of hundred pounds

I think once you get into the three years plus it’s long. If you’ve no plan to marry at that stage I’d say you aren’t actually engaged yer just pretending

We got engaged in May and when the venue we looked at didn’t have a date soon enough for us, we looked at another venue. Being married sooner is more important to us than any specific venue. We are getting married this December and people do look at me like I’m mad. I think anything over a year is long. I understand waiting until the following summer, but not longer than that. That being said - what people think of as long doesn’t matter! If you’re happy who cares

We were together for 10yrs before getting engaged and another 7yrs before getting married. Neither of us wanted a big wedding or fuss but when mine and DP's parents both became seriously unwell at the same time it brought into sharp focus what a nightmare it would be for us to act as next of kin for each other should something happen. We booked our wedding and were married within 8 weeks.

I would say that's about average these days. Lots of venues book 2 years in advance.

I wanted a max engagement of 2 years, but it ended up being 4.5 years thanks to covid. Now THAT felt like a long engagement!

It’s 57 quid to get married at a registry office. I understand for many that’s a lot of money, is this what you’re saying? You can’t afford 57 pounds and haven’t been able to for 11 years?

I was going to say the same thing

Too add thought we actually booked our wedding only one year before we got married. If I'd really how cheaply and easily u could do it I'd have done it years ago

I would say over a year but I know that's quite common nowadays. Just can't imagine planning for that long!

Anything after 2, maybe 3 years.

Three years for us!! Normally takes at least a couple of years to plan the wedding

The point is that an engagement means nothing legally so if you have kids and buy a house first without sorting out the legal aspects then one of you dies it’s a lot more complicated than if you’d had a cheap ceremony without all the fuss (it’s the marriage that’s a legal contract).

I think anything more than a year is a long engagement

Horses for courses though

Ours was 4 months

We had the choice of a three and a half year wait for the venue of our choice or a cancellation in 6 weeks time. We choose the latter. I suppose option three was go elsewhere but it would always have felt like a compromise.

A couple of years to plan a wedding?! How? Venue, outfits, guests, food, rings. It’s a party with a few added extras.

I’d consider yours pretty long OP, I don’t know many friends who’ve had such long engagements. Not sure why you were offended by his comment. He thinks it’s long, you don’t. That’s okay. For your own reasons it’s the right time frame for you. I can’t imagine being so attached to a particular venue I’d put off being married to wait for it. But everyone’s different.

I was say 5 plus years is long.

My fiancee proposed last month and we're currently planning the wedding and will end up with a 15 month engagement mostly to cater for travel to be better again as I'm Australian so my family and friends will be travelling over and I know people are still nervous about international travel.

But 15 months is still challenging as majority of suppliers I've contacted are all booked up already!

Been engaged 26 years…..suppose that’s quite long!
getting married next year though (decided that 2 weeks ago) got it all booked for in 6 months time

I think it might be different, depending on what generation you are.
I agree with @Riverlee that "back in the day" the time between agreeing you were going to get married and actually getting married tended to be much shorter, so the fact people want specific venues now and to spend £££, combined with the backlog from covid delays means that engagements now do tend to seem much longer than many of us are used to.

Then there are people who seem to say they have got engaged, or they are engaged, but they have no actual plans to marry - which is just odd.

I think less than 18months is not long. You need to book wedding venues getting on for a year in advance.

Over two years is definitely long.

22 months is a bit on the long side but not anything particularly unusual.