Did you talk to your OH about getting engaged?

Yes, we did. In fact I picked my own ring and it was agreed that we would get engaged on holiday and tell everyone when we came back.

I think both me and my man were really nervous about the whole thing for a while. We both fell for each other very quickly which caused various problems within our circle of friends (he was pals with my ex boyfriend). He said he was falling in love with me a few weeks into the relationship and I knew we had something really special from the off (had to stop myself blurting out 'I love you' the first time we kissed - it just popped into my head - and I remember thinking 'you can't go saying that, he'll think you're a nut job!')

I remember lying in bed after a few months and him saying he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and I felt a full body blush if that makes sense?! But it was a while before the M word was mentioned. Even then it was in a jokey manner. We were at my step-brother's wedding and he said 'what if that was us at the top table?' to which I said 'fancy it?'. He replied 'you just asked me to marry you......' in a wee sing song voice (as I say, nervous ?)

It was another few months after that, once we'd been living together a few weeks that he turned to me in bed one morning and said 'Marry me?'. I said yes straight away but he was all 'I'm being serious!' and so was I in my reply!

I think before we were both worried and nervous to rock the boat as we both knew we had something really special and didn't want to jeapordise that by going in too deep too quickly (although we both felt it IYSWIM). We kept it secret for 6 months as we didn't fancy planning, or fielding questions, but broke the news to all in February, two years after we got together.

He actually can't stand the idea of the wedding and calls it his idea of hell, but what he wants is a marriage with me, and he's prepared to endure the 'fancy dress party' in order to get it. I think that's a damn good starting point ?.

[As an aside I'm not even vaguely Bridezilla compared to some of the posts on WP although he thinks I am]

No, we didn't. But then I was divorced and had said I wasn't interested in getting married again, so it just wasn't something I was likely to bring up. However, I didn't want children. I think if I had we'd have discussed the practicalities of that, including marriage

L
xx

The first time we got engaged, no - H sprung it on me completely out of the blue (millenium eve) but for various reasons I broke it off. So I guess it was always in the background, it was another 5 years before we got engaged and saw it through in 2007 - but I had (possibly slightly more than) hinted that I was ready to get married, but it was still a bit of a shock when he finally did pop the question.

Cheers guys. I suppose it just seems a bit 'contrived' (sorry spelling is shite, have had a coupel of baileys ? ) to me to sit down and talk about it. I don't know why, I mean we have the house together and stuff but talking about marriage doesn't feel right. I suppose I'm old fashioned and think it should come from them proposing out of the blue (aka first husband) but that's not happening.

We'd talked about future plans but nothing concrete. We've literally just taken every day as it comes really. The only thing we've really talked about beforehand was when we made the decision to try for children. I don't think that's something you can 'just wing' really.

We got together quite young (me 19 & him 20). Moved into our first house (both from living with parents) at 25 & 26. H took me out for a meal that evening to celebrate, and proposed. He'd been out that day and bought the ring when I thought he'd been shopping for furniture! ?. Totally out of the blue. A huge suprise but I think he was pretty sure the answer would be yes ?.

We didn't intend to have a long engagement but life got in the way a little and we got married at 29 & 30. Now 33 & 34 and been trying for a baby for the past 2 years.

A pretty traditional route really I suppose? God, how boring does that make us sound! ?.

I totally know what you mean. My boss' son took his girlfriend to New York recently. He proposed while they were out there. All lovely and nice so far. Except for that fact that the boss has been telling us all about this for ages. How she'd already been shopping for the ring over here (which they took with them), they'd already booked the hall for the engagement party for their return, and sent the invitations. All before they'd left for NY, and all before he'd even asked her! The whole situation made me feel really sad... where was the romance?

But, horses for causes and all that. If we all did it in the same way, I guess it'd be very unexciting ?.

I don't like the whole 'go out and pick your own ring' thing anyway. I adore my engagement ring because it was the ring H presented me with when he proposed. He'd spent a lot of time picking and chosing what he thought I'd love, and that means the world to me. Plus I do genuinely love it too ?. Just seems more romantic somehow that picking my own (but that's purely my opinion on my ring / proposal... not poo-pooing anyone elses choices as everybodys is special to them ?).

Thanks Minx. I think your story is lovely, not boring at all, its just 'organic' for want of a better word and lovely!!

Organic ?. love it!

No! We had both been married before and although we had a whirlwind romance of the super extra kind (4th time I met him was because we were moving in together) we had both discussed how cack marriage is and that neither of us wanted that again. 6 months later it was my birthday.. a few days before he went out on his own and came back looking sheepish.. I knew he was up to something, and I feared the worst.. he has actually gone to collect my engagement ring, and when he proposed I didn't doubt what I was doing for a second.

You wouldn't have thought my engagement was very romantic then Minx ?

The first Mr Nora knew about our engagement was when I told him I'd booked the wedding ?

We bought the ring shortly after and booked a trip away and he proposed to me properly whilst away. We'd been together 9 years and he'd proposed twice before (in the whirlwind of the first year we got together) but I'd said no as I felt I was too young. We plodded on for some years and I think we both assumed we'd just be together without needing a wedding ring but a health scare made us both re-evaluate our lives and so on the spur of the moment one day, I just booked the wedding somewhere we'd had our first date. I told him some days/weeks later and although he was suprised, he was over the moon.

Hugo, I don't think you shoud shy away from having the conversation with your OH. You could always just ask him something like "where do you think we'll be in 5 years time?" See what he says and tell him your hopes for the future are to be married and hopefully be a mum.........see if he's in the same frame of mind and take it from there.

I was very unromantic.

He asked me "When do you think" and I drew him a table (Scientist!) of what i wanted to do what year and basically said - Autumn 2004 would be a good time to propose.

Poor man

Minx, I can't think of anything more romantic than being told to go out and try on every ring in Glasgow and then choose whatever one you like. I had an absolute ball!

We never talked specifically about when we would get married but we knew from very early on (got together at 16 & 17) that we were in this for the long run, and always talked about when we were married, had kids etc. Ind the end he took me to Paris for the weekend on our <frantically counts> 6th anniversary. I must admit once we were on the Eurostar I did have a wee inkling ? but we were young and I was never in a rush, so would have happily waited a couple of years if needs be. I'm probably more practical so my gut instinct was to get the mortgage before the wedding. We didn't, and that's now something I do regret in some ways (could have easily got a 100%+ mortgage then, now it'll be years before we have a deposit for somewhere) although the wedding was just awesome, and if we waited to have 'spare' money, we'd never have done it!

I was glad he chose my ring - partly the 'romantic' idea that he chose it, and partly because I'm so not a jewellery person, I would have no idea what suits me. So he made it easy, and I do love it - mainly because he chose it tbh. I can definitely understand that if you're more into that kind of thing, you'd definitely want a say in something you'll be wearing every day for the rest of your life!

Like R-A we got together young and knew early on we wanted to stay together. We did discuss it quite a few times, along with kids, houses etc. I didn't know he was going to propose when he did (on our 5th anniversary). We waited another 5 years to get married though. We bought a house first.

We've talked about it in that we know we'll get married and have children (name discussions on-going!) but I'm like you in that I would hate to have any kind of discussion over when and where we'd get engaged. It was just feel weird and I think if I even suspected, never mind knew, that he was about to propose (before a holiday for example) I'd be really disappointed.

Badkitti ? ?

If we hadn't talked about it, we'd never have got married. We'd been living together for almost 6 years, and in Feb 2007, some friends of ours were talking about renewing their vows, which got us talking (along the lines of 'they'll have got married twice, we haven't even done it once yet'). If I hadn't pushed a bit and started looking at venues, I think even then it would have died a death,

In the end, I never got a proposal or an engagement ring, the planning just sort of snowballed and we got married in Nov 2007. Not exactly the way I pictured it when I was younger, but we had a wonderful day and I'm happy that we did things the way we did - it was very 'us'.

We did talk about it. We'd been together about 6 months and he said if he ever got married he'd want to marry someone like me, and I said the same back. That was it ?

We knew we were pretty keen on each other though and I think H knew I wouldn't live with him unless we were married. I didn't just want to drift along, I wanted commitment ?

I think, since I was already divorced at 23 ? I didn't view marriage the same as H - I didn't see it as that big commitment because it's not hard to get out of

L
xx

We never talked about it at all. We had only been together about 3 months before he called me (at 2am and drunk!) and asked me to marry him. I laughed and said no, thought about it for a few seconds and realised he was serious and then said yes. I got my ring about 5 weeks later on my 21st birthday. I was 27 in April and were still not married.

I did. I was already divorced and my ex H got engaged and the way I reacted to that was pretty severe and took me by surprise. I was just getting fed up of the "It'll happen one day" conversations- I was 34 and wanted to be married. I felt like we'd missed the moment as we'd been together for 3-4 years, we weren't kids and there'd been nothing stopping us getting married a year into the relationship when we were still at the "obsessed with each other" stage. Anyway, I finally cracked and had a good old whine to H and he proposed that night. So not how I wanted it to happen but at least he finally got around to it.

We'd talked about marriage in the abstract and my H was quite anti at the time - "it's just a piece of paper" and all that. I was quite happy with being in a committed relationship without being married and therefore suspected that I'd never actually get hitched. When he proposed (with a fish rather than some jewellery - long story!) I was so gobsmacked that I forgot to say yes! ?

HB - If you fancy getting married, and think that he feels the same, then why not ask him, rather than waiting for him to ask you?

Double post.

I actually felt the same tbh, and I was quite surprised early on in our relationship when it transpired H 'believes' in marriage as he was brought up in a very non-traditional liberal leftie manner by a single lesbian feminist mum and a host of her friends. He's inherited alot of the politics but not the radical feminist opposition to marriage. I guess turning out straight and getting married (at 23!) was his was of rebelling ?

<sorry, bit tangential>

My reply when he did ask was 'are you serious?' ? very romantic!

We talked about it but i didnt know when it would happen. Then he took me ring shopping and let me choose my ring but made sure i knew it wasnt a proposal he just wanted to be prepared. i did have an inkling about when he would propose but it was still a lovely surprise.

We had the usual talk about the future and a week before we were moving in together my mum was moaning about referring to him as my partner - she preferred fiance. My H thought about it, was concerned about spending money on a ring so close to moving house and I told him if we didn't do it now then we never would.
He went out and bought the ring the same afternoon. How totally unromantic was that!!! Mind you we'd not been dating long when he unofficially asked me to marry him (in a pub) which was more romantic and spontaneous.

However getting him to set a date.........that was a whole other mission.

We did. We knew we wanted to have children and I knew he wouldn't without being married first so it was kind of a no brainer.

We had decided that it would happen at some point. However his Nan was taken into hospital and given a week to live and we decided it would be nice if she knew he was engaged before she died. As it happens she died the day after we had made the decision... but he did it anyway (inc asking both sets of my parents and borrowing a ring as he knew he wouldn't find one I loved as I am a fussy bugger ?).

We've not had an official talk about it, I just joke (subtly) about it happening (we're not engaged) I'm not divorced yet though, which might be stalling him.

He said that if England won the rugby world cup he'd ask me - they didn't, he didn't

I thought he would do it when we went to New York in April, something romantic like the top of the Rock or similar, but nope

We went to the Peak District last weekend. Nup didn't happen. There were even ducks there (our mutual friend joked to him at some point that he'd have to get a duck to hold the ring in its beak when he asked me)

Maybe a divorce will help ?

We had talked about it but not seriously.

In November 2006 our son was born & 6 weeks later on Christmas Day @ my mum & dad's house all the family were sat round the dinner table & when I pulled my Christmas Cracker a box fell out with an engagement ring in. It was a total suprise (although everyone else knew what was going on because my h2b had told them before hand) I was so shocked & I cried.

We talked about it loads(more me nagging him to ask) - then when I discovered he was planning to propose I completely freaked out and asked him not to!

One month later and I apologised to him and we mutually agreed to be engaged - no one asked anyone -as such!

Hope that helps ( i think you should ask him........)

X

We never talked about it. I moved in with him 2 weeks after we started seeing eachother and after we had been together for about 4 years, I did somethng utterly stupid as I believed our relationship to be going nowhere. I was very much in love with him but felt like he didn't feel the same and wanted out. I 'fessed up and started to pack my bags. I was just leaving and he said that I had ruined everything. I said that I know I had. he then said "No, I was going to ask you to marry me next week" My whole world came crashing down at that point and the tears started. As I walked out of the front door, through the tears I stupidly said "you still can". I turned around and he was on one knee and said "will you marry me". We were both in tears. We got wed 22 months later and have been together nearly 10 years now. I'll stop rambling on now but the answer was no, we never talked about getting engaged and my proposal was a complete shock. I have a good man there.

We had been together 7 months and whilst lying in bed we said how we knew we would be together forever, and why didn't we just get engaged now.

Was emabrassing bringing it up the next morning in case he didn't remember, be of course he did.

We didn't tell anyone until 2 months later, we went away for the weekend to do it officially, and then told everyone when we got back

18 months later we were married