As the days become longer and the promise of summer is within our grasp, we’re also staring down the barrel of wedding season. It’s no surprise that wedding season isn’t my favorite, but now that I’ve been on the other side of a wedding (broken engagement, anyone?), I also know the painstaking amount of work that goes into having a wedding people will remember for both the good and the bad.
This also means that there is going to be a continuous cycle of friends getting engaged over the next few months. We should always be happy for two people in love. Let that be clear.
However, there is a lot that goes into the proposal before the picture-perfect moment, which can honestly be extremely nerve-wracking and terrifying.
That is why I’m here to help you help yourselves help your significant others for when the time is right and you want to take the next step.
If you’re getting serious with your boyfriend, and there has been talk of marriage, congratulations! You’re on the road to adulthood. However, don’t beat your boyfriend up, harp on him or give him a deadline by which he needs to propose. You should never force him to “shit or get off the pot,” and you should never encourage your friends to jump on the bandwagon, as well. We get it, you want to get married. You’ve probably made it abundantly clear. It’s not that we’re dragging our feet (Maybe we are!) or we’re not sure whether we want to spend the rest of our lives with just one person (That’s a legitimate fear to have), it’s that we’re waiting for the right time.
The myth that a guy should spend three month’s salary on a ring is a total farce, and that should not be the standard marker for what an engagement ring should cost. If you love someone, and you want to show them how much they mean to you, an engagement ring is a memento of the promise and commitment. Whether you can only afford a wedding ring from Walmart (like Gary did for Amber on Teen Mom) or you can afford a 2-carat, flawless diamond ring that costs an arm and a leg, remember that the ring is a symbol of the love you have, not a price tag for how much your love costs.
We may be waiting for an opportunity to pop the question when all of our loved ones can be in the same place, we may be planning something special on a vacation, or we may simply be waiting for the proposal to be a true surprise. Ladies, if you keep forcing guys to propose to you on a deadline, it ruins the special moment, and honestly, do you really want to start off that next chapter of your life with your partner mildly annoyed at you?
Maybe it’s because I live in Florida, but for the love of god, please stop getting engaged in front of Cinderella’s castle at Disney! It is overdone; it is beyond lame and uninspired. I don’t care how much you love Disney; it’s tacky. There are so many other locales you can get engaged at, so please suggest to your future fiancé to use a little more creativity and imagination before he pops the question. Also, if you’re in a full face of makeup and a perfect outfit to go to Disney, you know damn well you’re getting engaged, and that takes away the surprise of getting engaged in the first place. If we’ve seen one Disney proposal in our Instagram feeds, we’ve seen them all.
Moving on, men, as the ones doing the proposing, have a million things running through our heads before the big day. Whether it’s tradition or not, we’re worrying about if we even have permission or not to ask for your hand in marriage (which sounds so antiquated and out of date), whether your nails are done (Ladies, make sure you drill it in your partner’s head to ensure your nails are done), whether the proposal is going to require extra hands on deck, logistics, the element of surprise and so on.
Essentially, there is a lot riding on this moment. The ultimate goal is that we want you to say “yes,” so we are not stuck down on one knee, waiting for you to decide whether or not you want to marry us.
Recently, I was at a hockey game and a couple got engaged during the “Kiss Cam” portion of the game. It was honestly adorable because the woman had no idea her now-fiancé was going to propose. It was sweet and genuine and shared with 10,000 other people.
If there is one thing I learned about proposing to someone, it’s that you have to be creative and find a way to throw them off your scent as well as find a legitimate excuse to lie to them. Ultimately the lie is benefiting them, but we should never lie to our significant others.
A great tip for when you’re going to propose is to ensure that the ring box is not visible at any point throughout the day. Those ring boxes are not exactly the most discrete things in the world to hide, so if she can make out the outline of the box through your jacket or pants, you’re already giving away the surprise.
As I said before, your proposal is one of the most special times in your life, and you’re going to want to share it with everyone who matters. However, before you make a whole spectacle of your proposal on social media, think about how you would feel if someone close to you had to find out on social media.
After you’ve been proposed to and you’ve had your moment to cherish the ring, tell your fiancé how much you love them and take it all in. Once you’ve calmed down, here is how your phone calls/FaceTimes should go:
1.Parents (Both sets)
2. Close family members/relatives
3. Best friends
4. Close friends
5. Long time friends / friends who you want at your wedding.
You may be thinking, “I’m going to be on the phone all damn day!” and the truth is that you may. What you can do is break up your day; your fiance may have already planned an engagement party that same day or weekend to announce the great news. If they didn’t, no big deal either.
What you don’t want to do is rush to posting on social media. Your ring is going to be there forever (hopefully), and all your friends and family will have time to admire it between the engagement and the wedding.
I have been the recipient of engagement phone calls and have bore witness to an engagement right when it happened. It’s magical and a true, happy cause for celebration. If someone shares that news with you, you want to also be respectful of their engagement. It’s their news to share, not yours. You will have plenty of time to go on social media and gloat about your best friend or cousin or brother or sister or whoever it is that got engaged. It’s a joyous occasion, but talk about it only when you’re allowed to.
An engagement is the first step in the often long, arduous journey to the altar, but it is only the second-happiest day of your life (the first being your wedding day) up to that point in time. Remember to soak it all in and focus on being present in the moment. A proposal may never happen again, but a picture lasts forever.
Featured Image via Unsplash
