Three year engagement
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Anonymous
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As a person who had a long engagement and was fine with it at the time, I have to say in retrospect the long engagement was a bad idea after having dated for several years already. It's easy to convince yourself that a relationship that doesn't quite fit is a good one - easy to convince yourself every step of the way except that last one, actually getting married.
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Anonymous
| Signal weak commitment/uncertainty. |
Anonymous
They won’t do that because one or both of them uncertain. |
Anonymous
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When we get married, my fiancé and I will have been engaged for two years which is pretty long. We love each other and see no rush to run right out and immediately plan a wedding. Waiting a little longer has given us a full range of options for the venue and things like the photographer and whatnot. I don’t feel pressured to decide anything. We have time to save money. Having more options has allowed us to book the most cost effective vendors for what we want, too.
Adhere to a timeline that works for you. It’s so silly for the people on this board saying “if you’re so in love why would you wait?!” As if one size fits all. I don’t doubt anyone’s relationship who has a long engagement or even waits awhile to get married. I do not think there is one bit of correlation between length of engagement to overall happiness in the relationship. |
Anonymous
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NP - even if one of them is uncertain, who cares? An engagement is a period to confirm that you want to get married. Lots of engagements break up and that is OK.
OP, whether you are or are not uncertain--have the timeline that works for you! |
Anonymous
Totally agree. The only people with looooong engagements are already co-habitating and living as though they are married. We were not, our engagement was 9 months and it was excruciatingly long. |
Anonymous
| It's ok to give yourself time to figure out if this is what you really want. No shame in that OP. |
Anonymous
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I would definitely wonder what was up. Why get engaged if you don't plan to get married for three years? You can get married over a weekend and delay the honeymoon until timing works out. It sounds like you aren't sure your relationship will survive his MBA program, which is a great reason to wait, but then don't get engaged until you're sure you want to marry. Many of my friends got married while getting an MBA and I was in law school. It's really not that big of a deal. Hire a wedding planner, pick a dress, it doesn't have to be a huge stressful ordeal.
I wouldn't get too set on a specific season either. You may be picturing beautiful fall leaves and perfect temperatures, but I've been to plenty of weddings where it was sleeting and cold in October or warm and muddy in February. |
Anonymous
I actually would not infer one iota that “it sounds like your relationship won’t survive his MBA.” Seriously, please explain why you would jump to that conclusion. There is literally nothing to support that and also zero reason to rush into wedding planning. Have you considered that not everyone wants/can afford a wedding planner? Did you just come here to make OP feel like her relationship is shaky or something? You should get a life. You sound petty and like you just want to make OP feel bad about something. |
Anonymous
| Yup, we did and it was exactly how long we needed. When we got engaged, DH was finishing his third year of Med school and I was about to finish a grad program. So year one, we were actually long distance b/c I got an amazing job down in DC and he stayed behind to finish med school. It worked great. Then year two he moved in with me (he matched at a DC hospital) and we got settled into our new apartment and his job and also waited for the vacation schedules to come out for the following year. We got that at the end of his first year of residency so planned the wedding around the two weeks we knew he would have free ion his third year. It was great having all the rest calm before we started planning. |
Anonymous
| I might think that you want a big, fancy wedding more than you want to be married. If there was some reason that you couldn't live together beforehand, like you were both finishing up a program, or the MBA was in a different city and you had a good job or something, that would make more sense. |
Anonymous
Like she can’t want both a big wedding and to be married? You people are ridiculous. |
Anonymous
Of course she can want both. But if you really wanted to be married, would you put it off for three years just because you can't plan the exact party you want until then? I mean, a fall wedding is lovely, but you can get married any time of the year, including right before a semester break so you can take your honeymoon then. So you're waiting just because you want to have a certain kind of party? People might think that the party is more important to you than getting married. Or that you are ambivalent about getting married. Although, honestly, they aren't going to think that much about it. But OP did ask. |
Anonymous
You pretty much made my point. MBAs are fun class trips and such. They are notoriously easier than JDs and MBAs. To the previous poster who said "pretty sure you didn't attend grad school," I did - i went to a top 10 law school, got engaged, planned a wedding and got married six months later. And graduated top of my class with an excellent job. and maintained a busy social life. So yeah, i think i understand grad school. You treat it like a full time job during the semester (9-6 every day), cram for 2 weeks during exams, and then summer and holidays are a breeze. I don't understand why OP wouldn't want to take advantage of her fiance's summers off to get married. It's super common for people to set their summer job end date 2 weeks before school starts - for vacations or going home to visit family. Get married then. Way easier than once he's working on wall street 18 hours a day and his boss won't approve him for vacation days. |