A number of things have happened since Chris and I got engaged, some of them a little more strange than others.
1) People, lots of people, will hug you. People you never expected to hug you will hug you.
The night we got engaged, Chris’ best friend hugged me and congratulated us. He is not a sweet, huggy guy. He’s like a brother that I have a huge sibling rivalry with. He and I argue about stupid, little things, so when he hugged me, I was a little taken aback. Then other people started hugging me. Random people at the place we got engaged. People at the dentist’s office. Seriously. Everyone.
2) Everyone will want to know when the wedding is.
Within 10 minutes of getting engaged, I was asked when the wedding was going to be, as though we’d been planning it for months. It kind of gets annoying after a while, but you get over it around the time that it becomes routine to say “we haven’t even thought about it yet” and then set a date like a week later.
3) Everyone will want to see the ring.
This one is fun. You get lots of “oohhhh! Let me see!” and you learn to stand under really good lighting all the time. At the club? Standing under the halogen lights. At the dentist? Hold your hand up under the overhead light. In the grocery store? Near the front windows for the nice ray of daylight. Your ring is sparkly and everyone wants to see it. Enjoy.
4) People will ask to be in your wedding.
I’ve already had people ask to be my bridesmaids, officiants, and just general “I’m going to be in it, right??” Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends, but I’ve long chosen who’s going to be in my wedding and there’s not going to be 24 people in my wedding party. I usually just laugh and tell them they’ll definitely be invited.
5) Other engaged people will become the most exciting people you know.
A week after getting engaged, I was at work when a girl came in who was planning her wedding. She invited me to go wedding dress shopping with her so I could get a little wedding love in while the engagement was still fresh. She is now a good friend and I love it.
6) Married people will become really irritating.
They’ve already been through this and their logic is incredibly annoying when you’re trying to be engaged and enjoy yourself. Plus they tend to shoot down your outlandish ideas like that $3000 venue.
7) You will go through waves of I LOVE THIS! WHAT AM I DOING? I HATE THIS!
Being engaged is like being bipolar. Something you love one minute is a really bad idea the next. Chris bought me an excellent book (that I’ll talk about in a future post) and I made the suggestion that we cater our own wedding because it sounded like a good idea at the time. Then he liked the idea. Then I realized that that was a horrible idea, and Chris still loved it. I still think it’s a bad idea, and I’m trying to come up with some other catering ideas.
8) You’ll have sticker shock over everything.
Wedding things are really really expensive. Photographers are extremely expensive. Dresses are extremely expensive. Flowers are extremely expensive. Some venues are extremely expensive. Invitations are deceptively expensive (Oh, they say $1.50, but then you need response cards that are $1 and save the dates that are $1 and two way postage for over 100 people). In generally, weddings are extremely expensive, and people will constantly be trying to tell you not to spend too much on your wedding. Which reminds me…
9) People will try to give you advice.
Telling you not to spend too much on your wedding, or that you HAVE to wear a veil, or that you can’t not have flowers in your centerpieces. They’ll tell you how your wedding SHOULD be, and that really isn’t what you need from random strangers on the street.
10) You will scratch yourself in the face with your ring – then you’ll freak out because you’ll stop feeling it.
I can’t count how many times I woke myself up in the first week of being engaged because I smacked myself in the face with my ring. I also scratched Chris one day when I backhanded him while play-fighting. And then about a month later, I started to freak out every now and then because I would think my ring was gone. I realized that I was getting used to wearing it every day and never taking it off, but I still freak out about it sometimes.
My favorite reaction was from the lady at Pottery Barn who I met when I was asking about registry perks. She got extremely excited and told everyone who walked past that I had just gotten engaged and seemed genuinely excited about it. She was very sweet and kind and how I was hoping everyone would react.
