Weddingbee boards

Let me tell you Miss Tattoo about drove me up the wall for a few months during her waiting process. I know it's frustrating to you waiting bee's, but hear a guy out.

Some of us just don't know after 2 dates! Miss Tattoo knew the moment we locked eyes. Men? We are not that intuned to our emotions to know. I mean, she was hot and I wanted my hands all over her. I knew that from the moment we locked eyes. I knew from when we first kissed that I wanted to kiss her and only her...for a while. Yes. For a while. The whole forever thing doesn't come quickly for us. It's scary to think about when you are so young that you are about to tie yourself to ONE person for the REST OF YOUR LIFE! To many men that equals=no more sex with other women. This is it. You better make sure it's worth it. Immature and gross? Sure, but I'm just being real.

So if you don't know, Miss Tattoo and I didn't make it the first time. We were very young and not ready to be adults in the world. We couldn't even take care of ourselves let alone each other. So we split and then many years later we found each other again. (I think this story is in her "bio")

I knew after a few months of talking with her again that she was the one. We were going to make this work this time. So, here starts the process.

We had the talk. We talked about marriage, children, where we would live, where we wanted to be career wise, ect. We talked about money and how we spent it. We talked about ways we would raise our children. She's buddhist and I'm...an evolutionist. Yes. That sounds nice. We talked about teaching them everything there was to religion and let them make their own choices. After some more thinking I told her one night in the shower, "I'm going to make you my wife..."

BAM! This is where you ladies should LEAVE IT ALONE! After those famous words, Miss Tattoo went kind of...crazy. All of a sudden Brides and Modern Bride were being sent to the house. The house phone would ring with spam messages from Davids Bridal. JC Penny's sent us announcement cards. All she could think about was WEDDING! She told me about the engagement chicken. ha ha ha ha. I knew it tasted funny! It was poisioned with engagement thoughts! no seriously, I loved it.
All this time I'm thinking that I haven't even saved the money for the ring.

Send your man hints/wishlist. I asked Miss Tattoo to send me what styles she liked and she did. That helped because I didn't want to pick anything out that she would hate. Again, she kind of went crazy after I asked for a wishlist. I swear she would have bought a wedding gown if I didn't hold tight to her.

Realize not all of us are thrilled about going into debt. I, for one, am so glad Miss Tattoo is not crazy about diamonds because I was not going to open a credit account to a store. She told me from the start that it had to be moissanite. I was thrilled reading about it. It's an interesting stone, but the price is what I was most happy about. I went from thinking how long it would take me to save up $6000 in cash for a diamond to thinking how much money we can save for the wedding. Now, I don't think there is anything wrong with diamonds, but do realize they are a pretty penny for the nice ones and your boyfriend can't save up that kind of cash in a month. I mean, unless he's rolling in dough then give him a break. When you decide you are going to buy a ring, you still have to factor in all of your other bills. So if he can only save $100 a month and you want a Tiffany's diamond, then you are just going to have to wait. Getting pissed about it is only going to piss him off.

If you know he has it, don't nag him about it. I know Miss Tattoo knew that I ordered the ring and all of a sudden she became kind of inpatient. I would see the way she looked when we went out and then I would notice the bitchy attitude when we got home when as proposal didn't happen. That made me feel like crap because I had no intention on doing it this soon. I actually had something else planned but...we'll get to that.

Just stop talking about it. I feel like once we agreed that we would be married, then she should have known it was coming. Some nights she would just probe me for answers. Other nights it would be something sarcastic like "Wow...Prince William and Kate got engaged. I hope I'm not going to have to wait another 8 years for it to happen." So she stopped talking about it one day. No more wedding talk. no more ring talk. No more getting mad at dinners out. If a guy feels like the only thing you care about is the ring and wedding, then he's not going to want to do it. If you keep talking about it, you are going to get a shut up ring instead of an engagement ring.

So what did I have planned? I planned on taking Miss Tattoo to a really great place and proposing on top of Mt. Washington. Mt. Washington was always in the plans, but I wanted to take her out to eat at this great place before. I made reservations for a Saturday in Jan. I would be done with my project and would have time to enjoy a Saturday with her. I changed my mind once we started having fun again. I didn't have to worry about the engagement ring coming up in conversation or talk about colors/favors/photography/budgets/ect. I saw the woman who I was going to spend the rest of my life with...and not the bridezilla who almost took over.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you have had the marriage talk your guy is probably planning and saving. If you know he has the ring, just let him do his thing. This is the one thing we get control over during the whole wedding process. This is the one time we get to be in the spotlight. So just let us have it.

@ellabee: Let us both have our crazy.

I agree!

I am sorry some of you feel like I am making a blanket statement for men. That was not my intention.

Someone asked once we have it in our hearts what makes us wait? Well, to avoid being attacked by certain bees, I will state why I felt like I had to wait.

Maybe you have an idea or maybe not, but there is a lot of pressure on us to do the perfect proposal. You have to listen to news stories on TV, read it on the internet, listen to your girlfriend swoon about these men who have gone above and beyond. I mean, who can compete with the guy on youtube who did an iPhone proposal in the movies! He wrote a song about his girlfriend and his love! Or the guys who propose at Disneyworld complete with matching fireworks that display "Will you marry me Jen?" blown up in the sky.

So now all of a sudden the idea of taking her back to the place where we first met seems so...cliche. I kind of got sucked in to the whole amazing over the top proposal I start coming up with crazy ideas like a random trip to New England for a nice weekend at a Bed and Breakfast. Then I realized I would have to wait until she got vacation time to take a long weekend and that wouldn't be happening until next spring. Then the John Williams tribute with the Pittsburgh Symphony came to town and I thought I could somehow get the conductor to play some sort of game with the audience, and then end up calling on us to go up on stage. Then the symphony would start playing "Across the Stars" from Star Wars (she loves Star Wars) and I would get down on one knee and say all the stuff I needed to say and then pop the question. Then I realized that she would probably have a panic attack in front of all of those people.

So that's basically why I took so long. After I had the ring, I kept thinking I had to have this amazing proposal to go with it. The night that it happened, I kind of just went with it. It was private, I spoke from the heart, and she cried. There were no fireworks, private violinist, singers and dancers, or thousands of people watching and holding their breath.

When she reacted, I knew right then that I should have done it a little earlier. I think she would have been happy if I did it over dinner at home.

So that's my view. I waited because for a moment I thought I had to have this amazing over the top proposal.