Member- oneheartoneway
- 10 years ago
I have been browsing through the Waiting board and thought I would post myself.
I am really annoyed that everywhere I go, people grab my hand and ask, “Has he proposed yet? Where’s the ring?” It happens to me several times a week. Any time I hang out with friends, they immediately look at my left hand.
In their defense, I thought we would be engaged by now. We started talking about marriage after we had been together 7 months. We both agreed that we saw each other getting married, having children, and raising a family together. We were on the same page. My boyfriend said he wanted to be together for a year though and didn’t want to rush into it. I agreed.
In September, we started pre-engagement counseling. It is something that my church suggests couples do before taking the big step. We found a great Marriage & Family Therapist and began pre-engagement counseling. We only had 5 sessions, but I thought it was very helpful. It prompted a lot of good conversations — baptizing our (future) children, saving for retirement, how we envisioned our wedding, and we also created a monthly budget with our joint incomes, etc.
Our last counseling session was Oct. 1st. Our therapist asked us when we planned to wed and we both said next fall. My boyfriend later said he thought September would be a good month. I pulled out a calendar and we looked at the Saturdays in September and decided September 29 was our first choice.
At that point, I was thinking the propsal was going to happen on our one-year anniversary, which was Oct. 17. But the anniversary came and went.
I started talking to my boyfriend about planning — how things get booked months, sometimes years, in advance and that if we wanted to wed on Sept. 29, that it might not be possible to find a venue that was available. He seemed to think I was exaggerating so I said I would call some places just to see if they even had the date open. I called 5 places and only 2 still had the date open. When I told him this, he was surprised. He wasn’t expecting them to be booked already.
We decided to go look at one of the venues. It’s a historic southern mansion we both thought looked beautiful. I asked him when he wanted to go and he said whenever, just to schedule the appointment. So a week later, we drove out there and toured the mansion. The coordinator told us that we could reserve the date for $350 and he’d hold Sep. 29th for us for a week until we made the decision. I asked my boyfriend if he could see us getting married there and he said yes. I asked him if he thought we should put down the deposit and he said yes. So we mailed in a check, signed the contract and reserved the date.
At this point, I was ecstatic. It was real! We chose a venue. We booked it. We had a date! I thought that meant he was going to propose soon and naturally, expected it would happen over the holidays. Except it didn’t. We had a conversation about it and he said he was close to proposing, but didn’t want me to pressure him. That made me feel terrible because the last thing I want is to pressure him. I just don’t think he realizes that planning takes time and if we keep waiting, we’re going to miss out on a lot of great vendors, who will already be booked.
So I have completely stopped planning. I’m not researching vendors online anymore. I’m not looking through Bride magazines. I’ve tried my best to avoid asking him about anything wedding-related.
I’m just upset at the whole situation. I thought that booking the venue meant we were going to be engaged SOON. Now I feel like a fraud. We’re still not engaged. I can’t tell anyone about this beautiful mansion, announce the date, or really be excited because it doesn’t feel real. And it won’t until he gets down on one knee and proposes.
Has anyone else been in this kind of situation? Because I never pictured it would go this way. I always thought he would propose, we would announce it to our family & friends, then we’d choose a date, venue, etc.
If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Continue to wait? Avoid talking about it or doing anything that feels pressuring? Some of my friends have suggested I give him a deadline, but I don’t feel like that would work since it pretty much is the ultimate form of pressure.
Any advice? Anyone been through anything similar?
