I'm Straying Away from my Anti-Engagement Posts...

I've written all of these anti-engagement blog posts.

I'm ending that here with saying this...

I was always under the impression that when you got engaged, it meant you needed to set a date and immediately start planning away all your spare time with wedding stuff. For some reason, It never occurred to me that couple can be engaged for 5-6 years before actually getting married.

I no longer see engagement as an announcement of "Hey everyone we know, this person and I are going to get married." I now actually see it as a promise of heart. I see it as something that someone does to say "Hey, I'm not necessarily saying let's go to Vegas and get hitched, but I don't want to spend a single day of my life without you, so I'm going to put this ring on your finger so everyone can know that they haven't got a chance in hell with you."

That idea makes me hate the idea of engagement a lot less.



In fact, I hate it so much less now that I'm going to actually give you an idea of how to create the perfect proposal for your lady (or gentleman, as some would have it).

Remember guys, this is a day that she will remember for the rest of her life. This is a story that she will tell all of her friends and family and that you're children and grandchildren will hear someday. Make it a good one.

First of all....something that I simply cannot stress enough, MAKE SURE SOMEONE HAS A CAMERA.

Almost every girl dreamed of the day she would be proposed to when she was little. When it finally happens, the very moment is going to be a memory she wants to keep for a lifetime. Make sure someone has a camera and is ready to take a picture and make sure the camera has flash if you intend to propose somewhere inside a building or outside during the evening.

Secondly, If there is going to be a ring, make sure you have it. The moment you ask her to marry her, she is going to want to stare it down while it all sinks in that she is actually engaged to be married. It makes everything 10x more real.

Thirdly, Unless you're planning on proposing in a photo booth or somewhere this just is not possible, damn near every girl dreams of her man bending down to one knee when proposing. I can't really say why this is important, but it is. It's the moment when a girl realizes that this isn't a typically moment. It gives her a moment to breathe in and realize what's happening before it actually does.

Fourthly, (is that actually a word?) Think Location. Location. Location. Location. Some are all down for it, but I wouldn't want to be proposed to in my home. Think of a special location that is important to you as a couple. Propose somewhere that you two will always be able to come back to whether it be the place you met, the restaurant you always go to when you have a little extra cash to spare, or maybe just a local park where you two have spent a lot of time together. If none of these really work for you, think of someway to incorporate things she likes. Maybe she's really fascinated with the sea or underwater life. Consider proposing on a boat or in an aquarium. Maybe you two often go hiking together, propose on your favorite trail to hike together. Remember to bring a friend or two to make sure they can get a photo of the special moment.

Five: Prepare what you're going to say. It's easy to get tongue tied in these situations. I mean, this is going to be one of the biggest days of your life. More than likely you're going to trip over your words if you've prepared what you're going to say, so at least be fair and give yourself a fighting chance.

Six: Try to incorporate things she likes. If her favorite holiday is Easter, you could hide the ring in an egg and send her on an egg hunt in the back yard. Maybe she has a fascination like pirates. Try to find a ring box to propose with that's shaped like a treasure chest. Maybe you two plan on going to see her favorite band in the next few months, if so, that would be a prime time to ask her to marry you.

Seven: Make sure to make a day of it. Don't take her to lunch at her favorite restaurant, propose and then go home to do laundry and clean the house. She's going to be filled with excitement. Maybe go to the mall or just spend the day doing things you love together.


As for now, that's all I have folks. Maybe this will help someone out. For all of you who are hoping to make a honest woman out of your girlfriends, I hope this helps.

I'm Engaged to be Married!

You didn't buy that, right?
Not even for a minute, I hope.

Surely those of you who know me especially know this could not in the slightest bit be true. If it were, you'd probably think I'd lost my mind somewhere along the way.

Today, I want to talk about engagement though. This isn't the first time I've touched on this. If you want to read my previous thoughts on it, you can click here to read my post, The Rules of Engagement.

It really blows my mind to go onto Facebook and see a new couple my age engaged every other week. I can't help to think to myself, "What are these people thinking?" Don't get me wrong here, marriage is a great, beautiful thing and so on and so forth, but at 20 years old, not so much.

At my old job, there was a girl that started working there as I quit that was a married 16 year old with a baby. I can't even imagine. If I had married the fellow I was dating at 16, I would have blown my brains out. Okay, maybe that's a bit to the extreme, but you get the point.

At 16, I had no idea who I was or where I was going in life. I was definitely not in any sort of shape to be making decisions that were going to be affecting the rest of my life. Even now, I see many of the folks I went to high school with getting married and having children. Let's focus on the marriage part though.

Most of you are nuts. I mean, I'm happy for you I suppose. You believe you've found the person you want to spend the rest of your life with and you're content with the decision you've made...for now. I can't help but think that in 10 years you might be looking back either divorced or in a miserable marriage thinking "Why didn't I just wait it out? I had the rest of my life. Why did I decide to make such a life impacting decision so young?"

At 16, I thought of marriage, as every 16 year old girl does. I thought what my life would be like if I were to marry my boyfriend at that time and how wonderful my life would be. That sure as hell didn't mean I wanted to jump the gun and get engaged though. I knew even then that it would be a good while before I would even consider any kind of engagement.  I think at 16, I figured that I would have my shit figured out by 20 and I would be ready to be engaged and then married and starting a family not long after that. Now, I laugh in my 16 year old face.

I am nowhere near ready for marriage. I don't feel comfortable making such life-impacting decisions that I am going to have to face for the next 50-60 years. Don't get me wrong. I'm extremely happy where I am now. Lance and I have been together for quite awhile now and he really makes me happy. I took a big jump moving in with him and I am content with that for now. I am fairly confident that he will be the man I marry someday, but that's the key word: someday. I feel like in the next 2-3 years I could be ready to be engaged. I could be ready for some sort of life long commitment, but I also accept that in 2-3 years I may be laughing in my 20 year old face because I may still be nowhere near ready for that kind of thing.

I think a large part of engagement is not only knowing your partner, but really knowing yourself. At 20 years old, you are still this newly become adult. You're still working on figuring out how the world works and the evil things that it can throw at you. Although you're teenage years are over, there is still a lot of self-exploration and having the freedom to really figure out what you do and do not like and what's good for you and what you think is good for you.

I feel that being in your 20's, there is no need to rush into anything like this. Naturally, there is the worry of biological clocks and wanting to have your own children, but that doesn't mean that you need to get hitched at 20 and start having babies pronto.

Through the last couple of years, I've noticed that people who get married later in life tend to go a much shorter time before they are engaged, sometimes even less than a year. At first, I thought these people were just as psychotic as the ones getting married at 20, but then I realized that these are the people who already have life and themselves figured out and it is a much safer bet to be getting married in such a small amount of time. At my age though, I'm figuring the best bet is to be with someone at least 3-5 years before even considering any kind of engagement.


I think that's all I have for you today, folks.
Oh, and just to clarify: I am NOT engaged to be married, just in case you missed that.

A Pirate Proposal

I've thought long and hard about this and I want to talk about the perfect wedding proposal.
When I say this, I mean strictly for me.

I want an awesome pirate proposal.

I want to be given a map.
Maybe one of the town (or a house to keep it simple).
I want a path of where I need to go, each destination with an X.

At each destination, there would be a note.
Each a memory, things that formed our relationship to what it is.

The last X would be in maybe a drawer or a cabinet.
In that would be a box.
Then suddenly, he would appear, seemingly out of nowhere and grab the box right out of my hand.

He would get down on one knee and say this:
"Ahoy me lady. Ye be t' love o' me life."
This is about the extent of my pirate talk besides "walk the plank!" and "swap the deck!" Those don't seem particularly useful in a marriage proposal, so we'll just stick to good old English from here.

He would then go on about how happy I make him and he can't imagine having to live a single day without me in his life...and all those sappy things.

Of course at the end would be the "Will you marry me?"

and a ring...just like this.

It's so beautiful.



I only have one legitimate wish when it comes to being proposed to and that is that it all be recorded so I can watch it over and over again forever. All of this would be nice as well.

The Rules of Engagement

No, I'm not engaged. Don't let your minds run wild now.


It's supposedly going to be the end of the world in...an hour an a half or so. I'm blogging, so obviously I'm not too concerned. I did see that two new couples on facebook got engaged today, though. Crazy stuff! Guess the believe the world is ending tomorrow, so they had might as well make the promise of the rest of their lives today so they only have to be stuck with the idea of "being with someone for the rest of their lives" for one day and don't have to think about the fact that by doing so they will never be with another man/woman again.

I'm only particularly concerned about this in one case, because the girl is 18 and far too young to be getting engaged. She's just getting all excited about growing up and not really looking at how much longer she has to live and figure things out.

Getting engaged at 18 is so silly. You change alot from 18 to 21. I'm thinking back now to my eighteenth birthday.

At this time, I was living with my mother. I was getting my second tattoo. My first one without my mother having to sign. I was irresponsible with my money and did as I pleased. 18 year old me probably would have looked at me now and said "Cool hair, but what the hell happened to you?" I had little love for my family and a hate-filled heart. I was happy with my friends, but I felt miserable and lost even with the best of people around me. I've changed a lot since then. 

Six months after I turned 18, I found out I was pregnant. I believed my child's father was the love of my life and I would stay with him forever. We had a lovely relationship and we meshed so well.

Turns out, our relationship was built on extremely faulty grounds. I knew that at the time, but I didn't think it effected us later in the relationship. It did. We never passed the friend zone. We had a hard time saying "I love you" unless it wasn't in person. We had terribly communication skills. We were afraid to lose each other to other people all the time. We blamed it on our personalities and growing up in dysfunctional families. It was more than that, though. We worked out great together, but we would have been better never getting together and just sticking it out as friends.

It's been a little over 2 years since my eighteenth birthday. I can only imagine what the next two will bring or where they will take me. 

In any case, I've gotten a bit of subject.

Getting engaged, that's what this blog is supposed to be about.

There are a lot of things that people don't take into consideration when getting engaged that they should. If these are not things you think you and your partner can do or be, you should probably consider breaking it off, because as the famous Mrs. Barnes life tip says "Don't date anyone you don't see yourself marrying." More than likely, if you don't think you can be engaged to this person, you're probably not going to marry them.

• You have to be committed to get married, and to be committed, you must first be insane.--as said at a wedding I went to last summer. This is correct. The first and foremost thing in any good relationship is commitment. You can't be running after other girls or boys. You have to believe that your partner is the best choice for you and no matter how great someone else that prances along seems, you will not stray from that commitment in mind or body.
• Think about what your partner lacks in terms of what you had dreamt as being your "perfect mate." Are these things you are willing to live without for the rest of your life? If they're not, think twice about engagement. If your partner lacks a certain very important trait, are you willing to accept that? If not, you may resent them for it later.When you're with someone, you should not be with them to change them, but to love them for everything they are.
• Do you have similar plans for the future? Do you want to have children and he wants none? Does he want to travel, but you want to stay in your home town? Maybe you both want to have kids, but you want them at 22 and he doesn't want them until he's at least in his early 30's. Make sure to set these things straight before engagement. If you want different things out of life and are set on this, it's not worth it to try to stay together. Again, if one of you is stuck living the others dream, it can lead to resentment.
• Listen to those around you. If your friends and family hate him/her, it's probably not going to work. If this person cannot fit into your world, it is likely to ruin long term friendships or ties with your family. You will be stuck choosing between the people you've known all your life or the person you want to marry. This can cause a lot of distress in your life and put a lot of pressure on your partner.
• Take religion into consideration. If you are a full fledged christian and your partner is an atheist to the core, is this really going to work? Are you willing to respect their views? On the flip side, although you may both be agnostic now, are you willing to listen to your partner and respect him/her if she decides to get some faith and starts going to church every Sunday?
• Communication. Without communication, you have nothing in a relationship. If you aren't able to sit and talk things out, everyone gets stressed out. Either they build so much up that they eventually explode or they will find someone that will talk to them about their problems. This person will be someone they will later realize "I can really talk to this person about things. Maybe I'm not with the right person after all."
• Do you bring out the best in each other? Does she make you laugh? Did he teach you something you've always wanted to learn? Do you enjoy trying new things together? Does your partner seem enthusiastic about your interests or do they simply wish you'd just stop talking about them? Do you appreciate and love the things he does? 
• Consider how your partners body will change as s/he ages. Will you still love your partner if s/he gets fat? What about when s/he is old and gray? Will you still love your partner when she is going through menopause and acting psychotic? Will you still love him when he can no longer get it up?
• Consider your finances. Does she spend too much money on clothes when we need to pay the rent? Is he buying too many video games when electric is due in a week? Consider how much money you will be making and what you will be spending it on. Consider how much debt you have as a couple and how you are going to wipe that out. Consider how his/her credit score will effect bank loans, getting a house, or buying a car.
• How much do you love your him/her when s/he is in a bad mood? Are you willing to wake up to this person every single day for the rest of your life? Are you willing to kiss only his/her lips before bed each night and wake up to his/her face each morning? Are you willing to take the good days with the bad? In a relationship, if someone starts acting unreasonable, you can choose to walk away. When you marry, you're in it for the long run.

to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, from this day forward until death do us part.

Remember, marriage is forever. There is divorce, but people should really stop looking at that as an option unless there is some sort of abuse. When you marry, you should consider all of these things listed above. If you believe all of these are completely true for you and your partner. Take the plunge. 

If not, reconsider.

Don't jump into it just because you want to grow up or because you want to have children and you believe getting married is the only way to go about doing that. Don't do it because you'd really like a wedding or it just seems extremely exciting. Get married because you truly believe that you don't want to live another day without your partner in your life.

If you liked this, you'll definitely want to check out the pros of being In A Relationship so you don't forget why it's so nice not to still be searching for that special fish in the sea.