Do Tell: What's Your Ideal Engagement Length?

i think i would like to enjoy my engagement for about six months or so..or pretty much as long as it takes me to plan the wedding.

My mom always complained that she never understood the point of long engagements. "You want to get married - get married! Why wait?" was basically her argument.

Obviously there are all sorts of reasons to wait. I got engaged Xmas eve and married late September. That gave us PLENTY of time to plan. Maybe too much time actually but with friends and family scattered around the world, and us getting married in Hawaii we needed to give everyone as much time as possible to make plans to fly out.

I would have been fine with a 6 month engagement. I realy believe you should have worked out all your issues BEFORE you pop the question (or else you say NO) so fore me the engagement is solely a time for logistics.

I don't get long (like year +) engagements unless one person is deployed in the military.

Six months.

I think a year of being engaged is ideal. That's how long my husband and I were engaged before we got married.

Also, dear, it's "aisle," not "isle." Sorry, just bugged me lol.

I have always wanted like 1-2year engagement! I dont know why even when i was little and planning my 'princess wedding' I am an over planning person and I want to be able to enjoy just being engaged for a while before I have to start with plans and that kind of stuff!

Long enough to plan a wedding, short enough so that I don't have a chance to back out of it.

I think if you have your heart set on a certain location and you live in a very populated area, you can end up with a 2 year engagement pretty easily.

I know if I had gone with my first choice of wedding venue, we would have had a 2.5 year engagement! (I picked a different place and had a 5 month engagement.)

A yr.

As for me, it was a few weeks, as we didn't want a wedding (we both dislike the spotlight, especially for something deeply meaningful and personal to us). We were engaged and married in a matter of weeks.

However, it took a long time to arrive at the decision to marry. We known each other for over ten years, and dated for several years. We never lived together (we wanted to save that for marriage). Once we married, we found a residence to move into.

This was right and good for us. We've been happily married for several years now. In retrospect, I just realized we've been together for about half our lives. Wow.

Until I'm sure getting engaged wasn't a big mistake.

One year. It's gives you enough time to plan the wedding without stressing and it also gives you quality fiancee time.

^ But the real answer is, when you're both ready/stable to finish it all up.

Our engagement is ending up at exactly 51 weeks -- just under a year. I would have loved for it to be shorter (6-9 months). But too many holidays/family things kept pushing our date a bit further off. Once you're actually planning the wedding, you immediately start wishing it was already done with!

I think a year is a good amount of time because it takes a lot of effort and time to plan a wedding. Also, planning a wedding can take a lot out of a couple so it's a good time for re-evaluating your relationship.

1 year I think is ideal but anywhere from 6 months to a year and a half is fine too! Any less than that it you don't have time to plan and enjoy and any longer than that feels like anti-climactic because the pay-off is so far down the line.

We didn't do this on purpose but my husband and I got married exactly 1 week shy of a year to the day he proposed. I thought that was a perfect amount of time.

I think between 6 months and a year is about ideal. We were engaged for about 7 months before the wedding and it worked out well...just enough time to plan a nice wedding and get things organized without rushing. I don't get the point of really long engagements, either. I knew a girl who was engaged for 3 years before she wanted to get married because she was obsessed with planning this huge, gigantic wedding...it just seemed like she was more focused on the wedding day than the actual relationship. Of course, everyone has their own set of circumstances, so what seems like a short engagement for one person might seem like an eternity to someone else.

forever

Two years, a day - it shouldn't matter as long as you are committed to each other. I can't really get excited about planning a wedding - I'm more excited by the idea of becoming a unit... so that takes as little or as much time as you need.

6mos- 1.5 years-- whatever works

I'm not into the idea of a big wedding, so just however long it takes things to come together. I figure if I'm saying yes to marrying the guy, I should be ready to get married.

Also - the lady's ring in the picture is much too big for her hand.

2 years

I'm having a ten month engagement and I feel it was perfect. If it was 6 months, I would have had to think about wedding planning all the time and would have been burned out by the end. A year is too long for me. I'm glad the timing worked out!

I think my ideal engagement length will have a lot to do with when I get engaged. My boyfriend and I both know we want to get married around 23-24, have kids 25-26 ... so that means we're looking at getting engaged RIGHT out of college, which is financially unlikely. We'll see what happens ....

My ideal would be a few months, maybe 6. Unfortunately, due to our circumstances, we are going to be closer to 2 years than 6 months!

I got engaged on Sept. 25 (my birthday!) and got married on June 1 of the next year. We were doing wedding planning every weekend for about the first three months and the last two-three months, so it was a bit rushed. A couple more months might have helped, but we wanted to get married soon (we didn't live together beforehand) and we were able to get a good deal for the June date. I literally started planning the wedding two days after he proposed.

1 year max

2 years was perfect for us. It was a lot of work to plan the wedding, so I liked not having to rush and being able to take some time off from planning if I wanted. Plus, all nice venues in our area book over a year ahead of time.

At least a year. I'm not engaged yet, but I have one more year of school to go and would like to be done with that before I have to do any of that kind of planning.

i don't think there is a set time frame or a right or wrong. every couple is different and i think it really depends on what works best for them. my husband and i were engaged for three years but only because we were finishing up college.

1-2 years -- I'm so shocked people are referring to this as "long"! Where the heck are you people getting married that you can get the venue you want and everything done in less than a year??

I think a year or two is a nice time frame because you can find a venue and book it early, then take your time planning and SAVING to pay for the darn thing!!

not more then a year, ideally within 6 months.

We were engaged for just over a year, but I think it really depends on your relationship and whether you have a timeline or not. My husband is in the military and had to leave for training before I graduate AND is being sent to his first duty station two weeks later, so although we would have loved a fall wedding in Kentucky (it's as beautiful as fall in New England but way warmer) after I'd graduated college, we ended up with a beautiful wedding over spring break.

I don't like to rush, so I would say 9 months to a year for me. I wouldn't want to wait longer than a year though.

I would love a year or even longer, but because I know myself I would not wait longer than 6 months, the longer things drag on and the longer I have to over analyze the more likely it is I will create problems out of thin air - not to mention all the family/friends issues that weddings and wedding planning breeds that can also create so much highly toxic, yet meaningless drama.

I wouldn't rush to plan the wedding, heck no! Anything up to 5 years would be OK with me. =)

My boyfriend, however, doesn't believe in long engagements. Pff! I wonder who will organise our wedding? =)

I'm working on marriage the 2nd time around - and trust me - we aren't going to worry about all the planning and fuss - we both have already done that business before so it doesn't seem so important this time! We want to go away and get married, just the two of us - so I doubt we will be engaged for very long...I just want to be married to him already! I think we will have a reception after though to make it all public with friends and family! The reception is always the most fun in my book anyway!! lol

I'm with hithatsmybike.
Our engagement is going to end up being about a year and a half. I'm making a lot of the stuff myself, so that will take time, plus selecting a location has proved to be painstaking and difficult! And everything books up pretty quickly.
Plus my finance is in school, so we have to do it over the summer or over Christmas...

I think it depends on the time of year you get engaged and what time of year you want to be married in - ie: if you get engaged in the spring and want to get married in the spring, waiting a year doesn't seem odd. Other than that more than a year engagement seems kind of odd to me.

1 year...gotta plan that dream wedding, house shop, and save up some $$$!

I think a year sounds good. An engagement is a big step, and I feel like it should come a fair amount of time before the actual marriage begins. A year gives people enough to plan, or if the stress changes someone (I don't really know from experience, maybe it's just a personal fear) then it gives both people enough time to think about what they really want.. just in case their relationship shouldn't end in marriage.

Marriage has always been a weird and somewhat scary concept for me, so it's just my take based on that.

I am waiting until I am sure I want to marry him. I have been engaged for about 8 months and I haven't started planning yet.

I take it a little personal when everyone on here starts ragging on long engagements. Every situation is different and I want to make sure I am really ready before I walk down the aisle. I think each couple has the right to take as long as they need! A lifetime is a loooong time to spend with one person.

I was engaged for about 8 months, but the first month of that we were in another country. Anyways... It worked about just about right with planning and finishing my master's degree. Like Leila said though, every situation is different!

I'm with plus_2_kid's mom! "You want to get married - get married! Why wait?". I never understood the concept of long engagements. When a person proposes and another says yes, both should be ready to get married - emotionally and financially and in any way possible, in my opinion. If it's not the right time, I'd rather just keep dating.

I've been engaged since November 28 and we havent even begun planning our wedding. We've decided to do it in Jamaica within the next couple of years. I'm in no hurry, I love being engaged to him and want to take my time and enjoy it before tying the knot.

Also, weddings are bloody expensive. We want to make sure we have the cash for it. He proposed because he wanted to show me that he was committed and we both wanted our relationship to be more substantial then just "dating."

Also, I love being a fiancee, it makes me feel like a princess.

i have been engaged for 2 years now and havent even starting planing our wedding but i know when we do it will be perfect. i dont think there sould be a time limit when your ready do it.

We got married exactly 5 months to the day after we were engaged. We wound up "eloping" with both side's knowledge. And our 19th anniversary is coming up, so I'd say that was just perfect for us.

A year. If it's too short, you'll end up getting stressed over wedding preparations, but if it's too long, then why be engaged at all?