Married forumites: How long were you engaged before you got married?

catkins

Didn't get engaged. Met on 11th January and married 21st June. Still together over 30 years later

daisiegg

1 - 2 years

catkins wrote: »

Didn't get engaged. Met on 11th January and married 21st June. Still together over 30 years later

I don't understand people who say they didn't get engaged. Isn't deciding to get married getting engaged? From the moment you make the decision to get married, you are engaged to be married! It doesn't have to involve a ring or a proposal.

angelil

1 - 2 years

Engaged June 2009, married April 2011. The reason for the delay was not financial, but because we got married in France (where I now live) and we wanted to be able to give family members a reasonable amount of time to make arrangements to come over etc. My parents also needed time to meet his parents before the big day, which took a bit of engineering as well.

MrsDrink

3 - 5 years

We were engaged for 5 years (bit of a rubbish poll, which box do I tick?), but we'd been together for 8 years before we got engaged. (We married on our 13th year anniversary).

Edit to say I agree with Daisy, we didn't have an 'engagement party'; I don't have an engagement ring; and there was no proposal. I call our engagement from the moment he said "I suppose we could look into it".

thehappybutterfly

0 - 6 months

daisiegg wrote: »

I don't understand people who say they didn't get engaged. Isn't deciding to get married getting engaged? From the moment you make the decision to get married, you are engaged to be married! It doesn't have to involve a ring or a proposal.

thats what I meant by 'traditional'. I never referred to my now hubby as my fiance as we never considered ourselves engaged. Perhaps "promised" is an alternative status!!

ciderwithrosie_2

6 - 12 months

Met end of October 1987
Started living together end of Nov 1987
Got engaged Christmas 1988
Fell pregnant end of May 1989
Got married Nov 1989

CACHAF

0 - 6 months

Met July 2000, engaged August 2000, married January 2001! Still married almost 13 years later

Got married at the church we attended and instead of wedding gifts a lot of people provided services like flowers. cake etc so we didnt owe any money after we had got married. Then we moved in together so our other gifts were things we needed to set up a home.
Dont know if I would have the nerve to get married within six months of meeting somone now but I am glad I did it when I was still young and idealistic! (I was 21)

Lotus-eater

Tiddlywinks wrote: »

But... living together is not being engaged is it?

I struggle to understand why anyone would have a long engagement - surely, once a decision to get married is reached then what on earth would take so long?

We got engaged as we wanted to take the relationship to a higher level and "promise" ourselves to each other.
After that, we weren't too worried about it, married or not, didn't seem to matter, we lived together, loved together and supported each other, marriage seemed something that wasn't important.

18 years later, we thought, lets just get married, solves any problems with inheritance, or the kids, plus we might as well and it's something to try.

So we did, hasn't made the slightest bit of difference to us, the bills still need playing, we still have the same arguments, but our names are the same, which makes things a bit easier.

Chaos_Monkey

6 - 12 months

Exactly 1 year (give or take a day or two). Not sure which box I’m supposed to tick though. Will go for the 6~12 months as it’s a smaller range.

SingleSue

2 - 3 years

We got engaged in 1987 and married in 1990.

We only got engaged to make it decent as we were living together, 2 years later a near death experience taught us how much we meant to each other so we set the date for the year later to give us time to pay for it.

We didn't save, we just purchased/paid for things each month and kept our costs in check....still had a horse driven carriage, big church wedding with a sit down reception for 70 and an evening reception for 150 though, I was the bargaining queen!