A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:What are the pros and cons of a long engagement?I have a feeling he will propose in a few months but I am not sure what my feelings are about it. I mean I love him, and I want to marry him. But right now, we're both earning very little and we will not be able to get married for at least 2 maybe 3 years. When I say we cannot get married I mean we can not have the wedding we want. Our families are in different parts of the world and we would love for them to fly to us and be there on the day. It would be us sponsoring their flight costs as they can't afford it (China and New Zealand coming to the UK). On the other hand, I do not want to be in what could turn out to be a dead-end relationship without formal commitment. I would like us to put our money where our mouths are, so to speak. So naturally one thinks of a long engagement as the solution.Has anyone ever done this? What are the pros and cons of doing this?Ps. We love each other and are happy - just looking for a practical solution and advice.
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reader, anonymous, writes (25 March 2014): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThank you all for your responses, especially youwish!
It looks like I left out some crucial details.
1) We are both currently pursuing postgraduate studies which we expect to complete in 2 years.
2)The reason why we earn very little money is because we both only work part-time until our studies are complete. A 3 year engagement will give us a year to work full time and save up for the wedding, nothing fancy necessarily.
3) We already live together and are completely happy with that arrangement. So whether we get engaged now or in 2 years makes no difference to the relationship as such.
4)His parents are very traditional and do not accept our cohabitation arrangement. While we are happy with it, they are not and they do not take our relationship seriously until we are married/ engaged as per their culture. The long engagement would also serve to gain some legitimacy in their eyes. He is having to pretend that we do not live together etc. but this builds a weak foundation for a combined family if we start of by lying to them. I would like them to trust me. I don't want them to hate me when they find out we've been lying to them. Also, we are not little kids with a dirty secret - we are grown ups committed to each other. That's why I use the expression 'put our money where our mouths are' in the eyes of mostly his family.
A
female
reader, YouWish  +, writes (25 March 2014):
 Mine was a 4-year engagement. We both had things we wanted to accomplish before we married, primarily our educations. The pros were that we let the world know that our relationship was serious and headed for marriage, and the cons were the level of patience we needed to stay engaged. He initiated the engagement, and we both were in favor of the timeframe we needed. He actually got the date for it in a dream he had a week after proposing, and we actually married on that date!
I don't recommend a long engagement that doesn't have a clear-cut goal. Ours did - getting college done and our degrees achieved and post-college jobs attained. Our graduations were set in stone (well mine, I had more school than he did.), and he was in a job due to graduating before me, and it took me 3 months to get one myself. We did all of that, and we didn't have a lot of money at the time, so we had an intimate wedding (150 guests) with a scaled budget that we could pay 100% cash for, that in my opinion was so amazing and worth the Ramen and the living lean to scrimp the money for it.
A longer engagement can have the hazard of a LDR, meaning that if you have a vague "earn more money" goal, you're setting yourself up for emotional fatigue and drifting apart as people start blaming each other for not caring or not making enough money (how much is enough anyways?).
An engagement should never be a "put your money where your mouth is" ultimatum, or it's made for the wrong reason. People can break engagements and end relationships just as easily as when there is no engagement. As for the sponsoring a bunch of tickets, that's a big thing. We have friends from India and the US(one from Chennai, one from Chicago)who, instead of flying all of their Indian family and friends in, actually had two ceremonies. One they paid for in Chicago, and the other they went to India for. My husband was best man at both, and we paid for our own ticket.
I actually agree with Ciar and consider myself and my husband a huge exception to the rule, but we had definite and finite goals that had dates on them, or it would have been a lot harder to handle a long engagement. I don't think it would work in your case. My husband didn't want me to put my money where my mouth was - he was just eager to call me his fiance, and he knew he wanted to marry me and I him.
PS: He also wanted to save sex for marriage! *THAT* was the hardest part by far. We didn't see the outside of our hotel suite for days on our honeymoon! heh.
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A
female
reader, Tisha-1 +, writes (24 March 2014):
 What is more important to you? A picture perfect wedding or a really good marriage?
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A
male
reader, Sageoldguy1465 +, writes (24 March 2014):
 You write: "...we're both earning very little and we will not be able to get married for at least 2 maybe 3 years..." Can you explain what that is so?
Getting married does not require high earning-power,... it is predicated upon two people loving one-another sufficiently that they want to spend their lives together...
Please re-think your question, and see if there really IS a question...
Good luck...
P.S. Long engagement - brief engagement - what difference does THAT make?????
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A
female
reader, Ciar  +, writes (24 March 2014):
 The pros and cons of a prolonged engagement are they give both parties more time to back out. Often times, one or both become complacent and decide they 'don't need a piece of paper' when they're already living together and have children. What they fail to consider is that a common law wife does not always enjoy the same legal protection as a legal wife.
Personally, I think if you can't marry within a year of engagement there really isn't any point in becoming engaged, but that is MY opinion. You have to decide what's best for you.
If you don't want this to drag on indefinitely or morph into a live-in/common law scenario then my practical advice is you get married within the year and scale back the wedding plans to something small, dignified and inexpensive.
These lavish events and the faery princess dresses are not traditional unless you're medieval royalty. They're unnecessarily expensive and stressful, they go on for too long, and they're tacky. And people resent wasting their hard earned money on a couple who end up divorced within 5 years.
Keep it simple and you can do it much sooner.
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