This afternoon I had lunch plans with my friend Laurel! She got engaged on Saturday night and even though I saw her on Sunday morning, I was more than excited for our lunch date today to hear all about her wedding day ideas and plans.
Once I picked her up, we headed out for a yummy lunch of fresh salads.
Why do salads taste so much better when someone else makes them for me?
My salad was very flavorful and perfectly fresh. A definite winner!
Laurel and I finished our meals quickly but kept talking until she had to go back to work. She already has a potential date in mind for her big day and it’s sooner than she initially thought it would be, which is very exciting! I can’t wait to be there as everything unfolds.
As the friend of a bride, I love short engagements! I get so excited for all of the wedding fun to start and want it all to happen now.
According to this article, the average American engagement is 14 months. Ryan and I were engaged for 13 months, but we both said we felt like you don’t need that much time as long as you can find a venue in a shorter amount of time. Once the place for the ceremony and reception is lined up, finding other vendors, flowers, a dress, etc. all seem to come together pretty fast (though it did take me a million different tries to find my dress). I honestly felt like Ryan and didn’t do anything for a good four to five months in the middle of our engagement other than wait.
Questions of the Afternoon
- What do you think is the ideal length of an engagement?
- How long were you engaged/ How long would you like to be engaged?
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I am getting married 9.10.2011 and we will have been engaged for 8 1/2 months when we get married. I think 8-9 months is perfect, plenty of time to do things without being rushed, but short enough that it is always on your mind and it stays exciting!
We had a 8 month engagement. I think that was a perfect time, much longer and I think I wouldve gone crazy. BUT I also had been in the event planning biz for 4 years before so knew all the good places to go…..
We were engaged for one year and I thought it was way too long. I didn’t like planning my wedding, so I wanted the big day to hurry up and arrive! I could have easily done a 6 or 8 month engagement.
Coming from someone who was previously engaged (me), it does take quite awhile to get to know someone’s “true colors”. Granted I was engaged quickly after beginning my relationship, there was still SO much to learn. I was engaged 7 months in total, and during this time things drastically changed…so I would recommend at least 10-12 months for engagement if you haven’t been dating for very long!
In the future (and yes, this will be the final engagement, hehe) I would probably want to be engaged for about one year. It seems traditional, and I’m all for tradition 🙂
I think a big piece that is missing here is the financial aspect of wedding planning. I think a short engagement is wonderful if you are planning a small wedding or you have your families financial support, but speaking personally, when paying for things solo that is not always possible…so, short and sweet is great if you can afford it, but waiting longer to save up is a much better option than going into debt to have your wedding more quickly!
Totally agree. With some relationships, it’s obvious that the engagement is coming and money can be put away (or the families’ have put money away already for their kids), but for others its a complete surprise and they haven’t planned at all. I do not want to bankrupt myself for a wedding, because living comfortably afterward is personally more important to me, so I’d much rather wait longer to be able to afford what I want and still have food 😉
My husband & I got engaged in June, 2009 and were married in December, 2009. We both knew we wanted a Christmas wedding and didn’t want to wait 18 months to tie the knot. It took a lot of precise planning but it all came together beautifully.
i think what matters more is at what age you get engaged and/or married. from what i notice people who get engaged or marry a person they dated in college tend to hit a crazy spell in their late 20’s (esp the guys) where they want to go out a lot and party. eventually this leads to divorce. its much better to be single for a few years after college and expereince dating.
Oh!! We will have been engaged for 13 months too by the time it rolls around! Right now we’re at 5 months 😀 This is a fun and interesting post! haha, I feel like I didn’t do a lot either for the first few months b/c of school. It’s not easy getting started is it? It’s so fun though once we get into the groove of things. 🙂
I was engaged for 15 months before I got married. There were definitely a few months in there that i wanted to just pass by. Looking back now, I am glad i had a little bit longer on an engagement. The planning was so much fun, and we really enjoyed the time we were engaged – we will never experience it again, and it was truly special for us.
I feel like the typical engagment is 6 months. I think there are a lot of differences for length of engagment goes along with if you are living together/sleeping together. It seems that most couples who are have longer engagments. Those that are saving sex and living together until they are married have shorters engagments lengths. My husband and I were in the latter…waiting to have sex until we were married and were not living together. We were engaged 4 months.
OH and also we only dated 15months before we got engaged..
Keith and I were engaged for 9 1/2 months and we both agreed it was plenty of time to get everything coordinated. I think anything between 6 and 12 months is plenty of time depending on how large your wedding is going to be.
i think i’m in the minority… [admittedly though i did not read every comment]
we were engaged for 19 days.
and my wedding was perfect; went off without error and the only bridezilla moment i had was 10 min before start time- i threw a fit wanting everyone to hurry up already so i could go downstairs and get MARRIED already. my best friend snapped a picture of me on the phone, bouquet in one hand and finger waving angrily in the other hand, balancing the phone on my shoulder, telling my father on the other end to tell everyone else to HURRY UP because i was done waiting.
haha, that memory always makes me giggle.
My hubby and I were engaged less than 9 months. I gotten married sooner but the winter months in NJ isn’t good for out of towners. I thought it was a great engagement length
I think I’d like to be engaged for about a year—just enough time to get things sorted out, not so much time that I start getting antsy or bored!
I would like to be engaged for a year… just to make sure i have money sorted out and everything goes smoothly!
I got engaged in January and my fiance and I are getting married on September 10, so when all is said and done we will have had a 9-month engagement. Honestly, at this point, I am so glad we didn’t wait any longer! Like your friend, Laurel, I had always anticipated a longer engagement but everything just came together and Chris and I are more than ready to tie the knot. I’m so excited!
I’m not sure if this will be the longest one here but, we got engaged at the start of March 2010 and our wedding is booked for July 2012!! Granted, we got engaged in Australia (my home country) and then had a long holiday before moving to Sweden (his home country). We’ve needed time to get settled here and then my family/friends need some notice to arrange travel etc to Sweden…since it’s the other side of the world and all. Sending out save-the-dates next week. I think people will fall off their chairs when they see that we actually have a date and venue.
I’ll be engaged for 16 months when I get married in April! I’ve known people who were engaged for over 2 years & some who were engaged for 3 months… depends on what kind of “planner” you are!
I think it all depends on when you get engaged. If I had gotten engaged in the summer, I would have had to wait a whole year before I could have a summer wedding with enough time to plan. Instead I had closer to 8 months because I got engaged in December. Since my husband is a teacher, we wanted to get married in the summer.
Honestly, I felt like the 8 months was too long (for me). While the planning can take a while, I hated wedding planning. It caused way too many fights and frustration.
I’m a fan of short engagments! My hubby and I were engaged for 5 months. It was a bit stressful, especially since our wedding was in a different state than where we lived, but we’d been together for 4 years already, so we were ready to be married.
I feel the same way about salads- I love them when they are made by someone else! 🙂
I don’t know about the perfect amount of time to be engaged- I guess it depends on the person and how elaborate their wedding is going to be. But I know my friend was sooo ready for her wedding to happen about 2-3 months before it did; she almost wished they had just had a super simple wedding on the beach right after they got engaged.
Initially we planned on a 13 month engagement and then wedding planning stressed me out so we ended up getting married in less than 8 months. I wouldn’t have changed it though!
I agree salads do taste better when someone else makes them or at someone else’s house for some reason! Maybe it’s the change up of ingredients haha!
I think I’d like a year in between getting engaged and getting married, mainly just to have time to enjoy being engaged. I guess at this point, I’ve been dating my boyfriend for 3 years, if it works out it’ll likely be another couple before I see a ring on my hand and at that point I’ll just want to get married, but I think it’s nice to just enjoy it before the stress of the wedding planning takes over. Granted I want a super simple wedding, so hopeeeefully there won’t be too much stress and planning to be done.
I got engaged in December and am getting married next week (!!) making my engagement 7.5 months long. I don’t think I could handle it much longer and we never felt super crunched.
P.S. I’m calling for guest posts to run while I’m on the honeymoon, if any readers are interested! (:
I agree with you Julie! Once you get the venue, flowers, photog, you can do the rest so quickly! We had a 6.5 month long engagement that was perfect but there was about 2 months where we didn’t have anything in between the major planning and then right before the wedding. We got engaged in July and married in February so we had lots of holidays in between…Halloween, Thanksgivng, Christmas and New Years so we had lots going on the time flew by! And I didn’t want to seem so consumed in my wedding so it was fun to be celebrating lots of holidays with family and friends! PS someone pinned one of your wedding pics on Pinterest!! xoxo
I got engaged on June 25th and we got married on June 5th the next year. I think 12 mo is the perfect amount of time, when your engaged for too long you start to lose focus of the wedding I think.
We got engaged in early August (8-8-08) and were married by late August of 2009….so a little over a year and that was more than enough time.
I agree that once you have your venue picked out and the major things done it goes pretty smooth. We also didn’t go a whole lot of anything for months and pretty much just waited for the wedding. I say that as long as you can get the venue you want, a short engagement should be no issue at all!
Jay proposed on 8/13/10. We both wanted an October 2011 wedding in Santa Fe, NM. We started looking at venues early September 2010. And already most of the dates for Oct 2011 were booked! There were 1-2 dates open but we were given less than 24 hours to make a quick decision and a deposit. With October being a busy wedding month, we also wouldn’t have had very many choices as far as vendors. We decided it was fate to be patient (something we’re not good at!!), take time to save money and plan our wedding for October 2012. We have been so happy with our choice because we’ve been able to get first pick of our favorite venue’s date (10/13/12!!), photographer and dj. A year long engagement would have been great but our 2 year works for us!
Most of my married friends were engaged for about a year, and it does seem like most of them took a few months off from planning in the middle. But I think that gives you time to enjoy your engagement! I definitely would rather enjoy the experience then feel rushed!
My husband and I were engaged for 4 months. I had just watched my sister do a 13 month engagement and knew that I wanted a shorter one. I wouldn’t change a thing. 🙂
i think it totally depends on how long you’ve been together, the area you live, etc. we dated for 4 months before getting engaged and then were engaged for 10 months before the wedding. we only knew each other 5 months prior to dating (and no, we didn’t beat around the bush at dating…there was no 4-5 month hang out period first). 🙂 so i think long engagements go well with shorter dating time and vice versa. but you do have to take into account your geographical area and stuff too. i wanted to get married in my hometown which is a small-medium city/college town so there wasn’t much competition for venues and stuff. but we were also bound by my job with campus crusade for christ and i had to work until may, and the town i lived in had zero jobs for my husband-to-be. so we had to wait til my job was over before getting married because we didn’t want to do a long distance marriage. yuck. so there you have it!
Jay and I were engaged for 9 months, which I thought was the perfect amount of time for us. We had already been together almost 10 years, so it was time to get things moving..
One thing I did NOT expect when we announced our wedding date? The number of people who thought we were “rushing down the aisle” because I was, umm..preggers.
Really?!? I couldn’t believe it! The thought had never crossed my mind before that, but people honestly thought that’s why we were moving “so quick.” CRAZY!
Agreed to this! We had been together for nearly 7 years when we got married, and more than half the wedding guests asked if I was pregnant. What they didn’t know was that we more or less had the whole wedding planned out before we got engaged… the ring was the last thing, not the first!
My husband and I got engaged May 1st, and got married Sept. 25th… but we had been together for nearly 7 years at that point. I think a long engagement only makes sense if you need to wait on others (like the church, venues, etc.) Since we had our wedding at my brother-in-law’s house, we didn’t need to wait for anyone.
We were together 7 years and then engaged for another 18 months! It was a lonnnng engagement. But we had the perfect wedding so it was all worth it. 🙂
I guess a year….I am newly engaged (march) and we already have a venue. We only are waiting until next summer because I am a teacher and that’s really the only time I can get married and have a honeymoon (which kind of sucks) and because it’s in Punta Cana so we want to give everyone enough time to have the funds to do so. I’m checking stuff off the list so quickly, I could get married this fall! So I’m sure Jim and I will be hanging low waiting like you and Ryan did!
I would think no more than a year, but then again I am only 18 sooo maybe my thoughts will change when the time comes haha 🙂
I think it depends on how long you’ve been together. My hubby and I were engaged for 8 months before we got married, but we had already been together for 5 years! However, if you’ve only been dating for a year or less, a longer engagement would probably be a good idea.
That salad looks delish! And yes, salads are ALWAYS better when made by someone else 😉
We were engaged for 8 months and it was way to long in my opinion. The sooner the better I think. If you know you want to get married why wait. I think 4 or 5 months would be good.
On our wedding day this July 30 we will have been engaged 14 months and 2 days!
We were engaged for 7 months. That was plenty of time. I can’t imagine being engaged longer than that!
I was engaged for a year… It wasn’t too long and wasn’t too short. Definitely perfect for us. (Maybe even a bit shorter would have worked. Ha, ha). I don’t think I could wait longer than that though.
I just got engaged this Saturday! WE ARE SO EXCITED! My fiancé is a 2nd Lt in the Marine Corps so we are getting hitched in January 2012. So only a 6.5 month engagement but it is prefect for us and fits around his military training schedule and when I graduate from graduate school in December!
I cant help but say CONGRATULATIONS!! 🙂
I was engaged for 5 months. I thought it was perfect! I am not a fan of the idea of being engaged for a year +. Seems silly to me! 🙂
My engagement was 12 months and we got married, the same weekend of our engagement, but exactly a year after.
I did a destination wedding and even though I started planning 9 months before the wedding, all the details of the wedding didn’t happen until 5 months before. I think I could have done it in 5 months to think about it.
I think it varies a lot depending on the circumstances of the relationship. On the whole, really really long engagments kinda annoy me. That being said, whatever suits the couple is obviously best! When/if (!) the time comes for me, I know I won’t want to wait around for more than a year… 😛
I think it depends on the situation. We were engaged for a year and a 1/2 but only because we were waiting until we finished school and bought a house. If you don’t have anything like that, than I think a good 6 months is usually suitable to plan a wedding.
We were engaged for 13 months as well. I think it was the absolute best thing for me because I changed venues several times!! I am so terrible at making decisions so I needed the time to go back and forth a bit 🙂
I definitely think it depends on the situation as well. My best friend from childhood got engaged on July 3, 2010 and isn’t getting married until June 2, 2012 (also fun fact: my roommate at school next year got engaged near the end of October and is also getting married on June 2, 2012. Stellar.). That makes sense, though, because my best friend and her fiance are both graduating in May of 2012. I know another girl who got engaged in April of 2010 and was married on September 25, 2010. Personally I thought that was a bit too short, but they pulled the whole thing off because both the girl and the guy were out of school. I think how long I’d want my engagement to last would depend a lot on how much free time I have–more free time = shorter engagement. At least, that’s what makes the most sense to me.
I think a year is perfect engagement time! I think I would start to antsy after a year!!