Ladies, as soon as you get engaged, there are questions that everyone wants answers to… ASAP.
The Sunday after we got engaged, Alex and I had 700+ miles of open road to pass through on our drive back home from Chicago to DC (thanks, Winter Storm Jonas for the cancelled flight….). We figured we’d take advantage of the time in between Podcast episodes of This American Life, and use the optimal time wisely to call relatives and friends, announcing our engagement.
After warm wishes, lots of congratulations, and cheery mazal tovs, we were bombarded with the same questions over and over and over. It was slightly unnerving how the same questions came spewing out of friends and family at a rapid-fire pace:
1. When is the wedding, do you have a date set?
2. Where is the wedding going to be?
3. Do you want a large or small wedding?
Panic started to set in midway through the 3rd phone call. Should we have the answers to these questions? It’s been 24 hours since my husband-to-be slipped the ring on my finger! No, we kept reassuring each other, we can take all the time we need to enjoy the ‘newly engaged bliss’ before jumping into planning mode. BUT with that said, we came up with a generic answer for questions 1 – 3:
We’re aiming for a Fall 2016 wedding, something small and intimate, probably on the West Coast. The only definite we have set? We want a Naked Cake with fresh blooms.
That brings us to number four:
4. Did you know it was coming / How did he ask you?
I love answering this question, because I love our proposal story. Though, we quickly learned to scale it down to a 45 second elevator-pitch, because it’s a story that will be repeatedly asked, over, and over, and over:
I did know it was coming, we actually planned the weekend get-away in Chicago together — so yes, I knew he was going to propose over that particular weekend, but the where / when for the weekend was up to Alex. The afternoon we went to the Nature Museum in Lincoln Park, we walked into the butterfly conservatory. As hundreds of butterflies fluttered around us, Alex pulled out a little black box from his coat, and asked me to be his wife.
Not bad, right? We get better at it with each passing phone call with a friend / relative. Yay!
OK, and lastly, my personal favorite (insert heavy sarcasm here):
5. Holy rock! How big is your ring?
I know everyone wants ring deets, but yikes, right?! I sheepishly smile and shrug as a response. If it comes in through text, I’ve been inserting the emoji equivalent. Boom! Handled graciously.
SO…11 days engaged, and we have nothing planned. Nothing.
We don’t have a date. We don’t have a venue. We don’t even know which region of the country we’d like to get married in. As I said before, we have nothing planned. All I know is that I’d like a Naked Cake, and heavily incorporate succulents into the florals.
I have faith, we’ll get there — my pinterest board is growing larger by the day — and in the meantime, I need to practice referring to Alex as my fiancé , not my boyfriend. As his mother told me the other night, ‘darling, you’re well past that!’
To all my married / engaged readers, what are some questions you remember constantly answering?