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Too funny! I just replied to your other post, saying basically the same thing - that I find these different definitions interesting!
Hrm... Good question! I've never really put much thought into that before! I voted for the "intent to marry" since that fits my views better... But my FI and I have had that intent for atleast 2 years prior to our actual engagement and I'm pretty sure most people knew- it just wasn't "official." In reality, I think we used engagement more as a time to plan the wedding... but more out of necessity- it had to get planned some time!
But, in general, I think its different for everyone. I truely don't think there is a right or wrong answer- just different ones :)
I donno, I voted planning a wedding but really it's just how the couple defines it.
I guess the reason I'm more hesitant when it's an engagement longer than a couple years is a lot of marriages don't even last that long. And if there's a reason to wait that long to get married then there might be a reason to not make the announcement of engagement yet. But I agree that for awhile bf/gf sounded way too informal. So, I donno, there's no right answer, it's whatever works for you.
For us, I'm completely the girl you mentioned. No ring, just a wonderful proposal and a 4 mo engagement where we planned like crazy. Once we made that commitment, for us we had no reason to wait.
For us, it was announcing our intention to get married, but it was also saying that we were ready to start planning. I can't say that it was just the announcement of our intention, because everyone we knew was aware that we planned to get married before we were engaged.
At the same time, we're not booking things yet since we are having a 2 1/2 year engagement. We're planning, but at a more leisurely pace. We both wanted a long engagement for that reason - we're busy and need extra time to plan, so I suppose that was part of it.
@lilyfaith: Good point! : ) Now I'm glad I enabled the option to vote for more than once choice.
i don't think it needs to be a "public" announcement of your intent to marry. for me it was just for me and my husband, showing our commitment for each other and letting each other know we want to spend the rest of our lives together.
@artbee: Good point. : ) I guess I view it partially like that, too. I guess it's just my parents talking that I didn't mention it -- they keep telling me "you should be able to be committed without being engaged/married/etc.". It's like...I KNOW, but I want to use it as a symbol/demonstration to show my SO how much I love him.
So here is another reason I voted for actual planning. For us intent was always there. I wouldn't have had a serious bf without the intent being a future together. And everyone knew that was our intention (though we still knew how we wanted to grow before we were ready to make that commitment). So to announce that marriage was our intention would have been like 'no crap'. So for us engagement was reaching the point where we were now making plans to make a wedded commitment.
A public announcement of our intent to marry in the near future. Personally, I don't like to be kept waiting: if you're going to commit to something, commit to it and make it happen. It would drive me crazy to have a long engagement when I knew I could have the wedding in a short amount of time and move on to new adventures...namely, building our life together.
But I'm not doing the "move in, buy a house/car/pet together before getting married" thing. I guess that's why a lot of couples don't mind a long engagement? They've already combined their lives in most tangible aspects, so the engagement/wedding would be more of a public announcement than a big change in their personal life. Whereas in my situation, a long engagement would delay more important matters for the sake of a party.
So basically, I think that the meaning of marriage for couples heavily influences the meaning of engagement. In my case, engagement means "let's get this show on the road!" :P
@Minutiae: I'd be all for hurrying up our engagement -- but we're waiting until we're graduated to get married (finances, ugh). We haven't moved in together or anything, so it IS agonizing that we can't "get the show on the road", but waiting to get engaged when we knew we wanted to be married was also agonizing, so we decided to get that part of the show on the road, and wait for the rest. : D
I checked "other," but I guess it is mostly #2, intent to marry. Though for me the point was not so much the announcement part of it, but the decision we made together. For me, the wedding ceremony was the second part of a process of making a lifetime committment, but the engagement was a very big deal to me.
But I can also see how someone would vote for #1 and #2... I mean it is about planning and practicalities, after all, no matter what kind of wedding you have!
Interesting views, mine was: A public announcement of your intent to marry, I started out trying to plan it in 6 months, but had a reality check that it was not going to happen so I changed it to a year later lol. I wanted and he wanted every one to know about our engagement, but how every long it take to get married is up to the couple.
I think engaged = planning to be married in a do-something sometime way. as in, one step past promise ring but you don't have to have a ring or a date. just the intent.
I personally see being engaged meaning you will marry in the near future (near future meaning maybe even up to 2 years into the future, but –again IMO- not more than that). I guess, I see engagement as sort of a “last step” before actual marriage, but that prior to engagement, you are both already self-reliant adults, with stable (as stable can be!) jobs/career, working on achieving goals, and you’ve established your own home. Like, you’ve already taken steps towards marriage. I know a lot of people don’t want to live together before marriage, so they won’t agree with how I see it, and that's fine of course.
Being financially stable, educationally stable and emotionally stable are also all IMO necessary steps for a marriage, and therefore, for an engagement.
I don’t mean this to sound pessimistic, but I think a lot of people confuse “engagement” with “love”, or think if you’ve been dating a period of time, an engagement is a way to prove (to whomever) that you are really serious and really love each other. I don’t feel that way, or see engaged couples that way...I mean, I don't necessarily think a couple is strong/more serious than another couple just because they are engaged.
I think the point of being engaged is that you’re getting married – and if you’re not ready to get married in the near future, I don’t see the point of getting engaged. Just my opinion, of course. To each their own.
@gabrielleelise1981: Interesting. Not to open another can of worms, but I wonder if part of the reason the public sees engaged couples as being more committed/in love than dating couples who've expressed the desire to marry is because of the "engaged/married/living together" rule for +1s at weddings. Not that I think that everyone should get a +1...but I was very grateful when my fiance's (then-boyfriend) cousins invited me to their wedding, even though we weren't yet engaged. I felt like they were validating our relationship, you know? But I think most of society doesn't see it like that...it's you're engaged/married, or you're just playing the field.
Yeah...i remember the awkward phase. I had to explain our situation to some people--deployment, no he didn't propose, here's why...etc....but in reality, when it came down to it, i just didn't give a crap what they thought of me and my relationship! he was my boyfriend until he pulled out a ring and asked me to marry him. Technically.
I find it so interesting to read these! I had no idea just how different our views were on what an engagement really is.
I've always viewed an engagement as a couple's intent to marry - no time limits. After moving to a new country, I realized it's much different here. In Sweden, a couple can be engaged indefinitely, without ever intending to marry. A lot of the younger couples think it's romantic to get engaged -- setting a different level of commitment then just bf and gf. But in no way can you assume they will get married.
In the begining, I didn't understand this, but after realizing that most couples don't marry because living together is just as serious with similar rights as a married couple, then it made more sense (and children are given the same benefits no matter what).
I still voted for: A public announcement of your intent to marry.
But at the same time, I am swayed to see an engagement like how my Fi sees it - it's when a couple decides they want to send their lives together.
All of that other stuff is icing 
i'm getting married almost 2 and a half years from proposal to wedding. I think it really helped my sister come to terms with the fact that her younger sister was getting married before her.
I always said that I wanted a long engagement because it would give me enough time to organise what I wanted. I find it hard to think of as a 'public announcement of intention to marry' because our families all knew we would get married one day and to me the announcement wasn't really a 'big deal'
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So I recently started a post about getting engaged young, but marrying several years later. And a lot of commenters wondered "why get engaged if you're not planning on getting married for 4 years?". This started me thinking...I view an engagement as a betrothal -- a public declaration of a couple's intent to wed (and, in cynical terms, a contract). However, it seems that a bunch of people in the Hive view it as the period of time in which to plan your wedding, hence there's no point in having an extended engagement unless it honestly takes you two years to plan your shindig.
I can see the idea behind this, but then my thought is, why bother getting engaged at all? Why bother spending the extra expense on a ring if all it's for is to have something pretty to focus on while you're being driven insane by vendors (LOL)?
As a third perspective, I have an online friend getting married soon-ish, and they're not even planning on getting engaged -- just getting married. Hence, they're struggling with what to call each other (girlfriend/boyfriend just doesn't cut it when you're planning to spend the rest of your life with someone...but "fiancee/fiance" just conjures awkward questions about "where's the ring?"). Have any of you gotten engaged for this reason? (I'll be honest -- part of the reason my fiance and I got engaged was this...but we weren't planning the wedding yet, just planning on getting married, so it fits in more with the "betrothal" model of thought, I suppose.)