By the time DJ and I are married, we will have been engaged for 21 months. The reasons were/are:
- Financial
- I thrive on research and anticipation
- We preferred fall to spring or summer
So we are having a long-ish engagement. It’s been fun for us, partly because we already live together and so aren’t in a hurry to get married for that reason.
About two months ago one of my coworkers asked his girlfriend to marry him. They have set a date for the end of August, a full month before the end of my long-ish engagement. ::hilarity ensued:: Just this past weekend they signed their first contract, which makes me want to hire them a wedding planner, STAT.
But they seem totally happy about their timeframe. They’re a few years older and six years into their relationship, so I can understand why they didn’t swan around on wedding blogs for 21 months. I don’t know yet if I’ll rate an invitation, but I hope so. I expect all my feelings of romance to be at a high around then.
My absolute favorite thing about wedding planning has been seeing that there are so many ways to arrive at married. But I wonder.If you weren’t waiting to save money or pacify family members or buy peonies in season, what would be the ideal length of your engagement?
By the time we get married in September, A and I will have been engaged for just about 9 months. That was a good time frame for us, seeing as we’ll have been dating for 7 years by that time (like your co-worker!) but if I had my druthers, a full year would have been nice. There wasn’t much time for us to savor and appreciate the engagement moment – we pretty much had to jump right in to planning!
But! I wouldn’t want it any longer than a year. Planning has been stressful and I don’t need it stretched out!
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We had/are almost through our 17 month engagement. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have changed it for the world. I like time to make decisions, and hate feeling pressured. I’m getting anxious/excited now and can’t wait for October to get here, but I know when I look back I’ll be glad we had so long to really “take in” our engagement and plan our life together :)
A year in a half…(18 months) is perfect for us. It gives us a little time to enjoy our engaged status and just enough to plan ahead without the date feeling so far out. But if I was given a few extra months…I would definitely take them.
when we get married it will have been 9 months, 3 of which were spent celebrating holidays and what not so we did nothing really wedding related. for me, this 6 month time frame has been perfect! i wouldn’t change it for anything. even the 9 months is cool.
i have zero patience and am used to planning events with a rather tight turnaround so anything longer might just drive me insane anyway. as it is already i can’t wait to see the results of the decisions we’re making! i’ve got serious wedding ants in the pants!
Our engagement will be a total of just over 15 months. I think 10 months would have been ideal: a month to enjoy and nine months to plan. My reasoning: it shouldn’t take longer to make a wedding than it should to make a baby! ;-)
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Speaking as a bride: 6 months – get in and get out! ;)
Speaking as a planner, though, I think a year to plan is perfect.
Wow, the exact same thing has happened to me with a guy at work getting engaged. I felt quite jealous to start with, but then I realised how stupid (and selfish) that was. It’s actually worked out quite well, as I get to see how they go about their planning while I’m swanning around procrastinating!
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We got engaged in November, got married 3 weeks ago, so were right at about 6 months. The holidays were busy, so we didn’t truly start planning until January. It was just right — 5 months was long enough that I didn’t have to stress. We knew we were ready to get married, and didn’t see much point in having a long engagement.