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Multiple Engagements + Same Family = Problem?

13

Comments

  • #62
    Hermia
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 115 ✭✭Hermia


    Miss Merry Berry wrote:
    Lesson learnt! I knew the usual cavalry on their high horses would gallop in and give advice on the way we should all live our lives and make us feel bad for God forbid having an opinion different to theirs and now I have to feel like a selfish person who goes around begrudging my friends and family for where they live, what they eat, what they work as. Yeah that's how I live my live! I really need to find a more positive forum.

    It's hardly advice, just a general observation about how some people come across.


  • #63
    Sligo1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,948 ✭✭✭Sligo1


    Miss Merry Berry wrote: »
    I knew the usual cavalry on their high horses would gallop in and give advice on the way we should all live our lives .

    I think the only people on this thread giving advice on the way people should live their lives are those saying people should put their lives and engagements on hold so friends or whoever can feel special for a couple extra days/months/years. Never mind the poor couple that has to wait around for an undisclosed amount of time...


  • #64
    LandoCalrissian
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 246 ✭✭LandoCalrissian


    OP this is complete and utter nonsense

    Seriously who cares

    I got engaged in a September and my brother got engaged a few months later on New Years Eve

    As someone else discussed there's only 2 years between us and we were both in long term relationships so to be expected really

    In short - "conventions" me h0le!


  • #65
    Miss Merry Berry
    Closed Accounts Posts: 94 ✭✭Miss Merry Berry


    Sligo1 wrote: »
    I think the only people on this thread giving advice on the way people should live their lives are those saying people should put their lives and engagements on hold so friends or whoever can feel special for a couple extra days/months/years. Never mind the poor couple that has to wait around for an undisclosed amount of time...

    Exactly! Consideration works both ways. I think I'm going to tell my sister that I'd like to get married the day before her. Sure why would I hold off, you're right. Poor her, what was I thinking.


  • #66
    K_P
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 577 ✭✭✭K_P


    Miss Merry Berry wrote: »
    Lesson learnt! I knew the usual cavalry on their high horses would gallop in and give advice on the way we should all live our lives and make us feel bad for God forbid having an opinion different to theirs and now I have to feel like a selfish person who goes around begrudging my friends and family for where they live, what they eat, what they work as. Yeah that's how I live my live! I really need to find a more positive forum.

    Ah here, come on now. You were the one who was implying that anyone who thinks it's ok to be engaged at the same time as someone else is a self-centred thunder-stealing wagon. The opposing advice was very much along the lines of live your own life and other people being engaged shouldn't take away from your own good news. I don't think anyone mentioned a thing about opinions on what people eat, where they live, what they do for a living, so I've no idea what you mean by that.

    Weddings bring out some weird behaviour in people. Some people insist it's a magical special time, without actually specifying what exactly makes it so special. Others, actually most, spend their oh-so-amazing-magical-lovely-and-speshull time tearing their hair out over budgets, invite lists, seating plans, figuring out what to serve auntie Bridie who can only eat turnips since she's had her hip replaced, what to do now that the wedding band have all come down with the flu, etc etc.

    For anyone who would be annoyed at someone else being engaged at the same time as them - a bit of realism wouldn't go amiss and a bit of cop-on that the friends and family who celebrate and delight in your wonderful news do not have to put their lives on hold while you live out your centre-of-attention princess fantasies for two years.


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  • #67
    machiavellianme
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,695 ✭✭✭✭machiavellianme


    Wait a minute, the girl might say no!
    No wedding, no problem.

    More seriously though, I have 8 brothers and sisters. I reckon we'll end up having more than one overlapping engagement, otherwise someone's going to be on the shelf for a very long time. This nonsense makes no sense.


  • #68
    Miss Merry Berry
    Closed Accounts Posts: 94 ✭✭Miss Merry Berry


    K_P wrote: »
    Ah here, come on now. You were the one who was implying that anyone who thinks it's ok to be engaged at the same time as someone else is a self-centred thunder-stealing wagon. The opposing advice was very much along the lines of live your own life and other people being engaged shouldn't take away from your own good news. I don't think anyone mentioned a thing about opinions on what people eat, where they live, what they do for a living, so I've no idea what you mean by that.

    Weddings bring out some weird behaviour in people. Some people insist it's a magical special time, without actually saying what makes it so special. Others, actually most, spend their oh-so-amazing-magical-lovely-and-speshull time tearing their hair out over budgets, invite lists, seating plans, figuring out what to serve auntie Bridie who can only eat turnips since she's had her hip replaced, what to do now that the wedding band have all come down with the flu, etc etc.

    For anyone who would be annoyed at someone else being engaged at the same time as them - a bit of realism wouldn't go amiss and a bit of cop-on that the friends and family who celebrate and delight in your wonderful news do not have to put their lives on hold while you live out your centre-of-attention princess fantasies for two years.

    Wow, the way you've painted me is so true to life. Do you know me? I honestly couldn't give a hoot when other people get engaged and I certainly don't dictate or judge how others live their lives. I would love to think that I'll only ever get engaged once and married once and to be honest I don't want to share my one special time with someone else who is more selfish than me, i.e, my fiancé's sister. I don't care about her but I do care about my fiancé who was annoyed about how she quickly made everything about herself and booked her wedding when we wanted to book it. Like I said I have family coming from abroad and I was trying to plan around their holidays. She doesn't have to worry about this aspect. That is my one bad experience. I don't constantly talk about weddings or dream about being a princess. It's all water under the bridge now, the annoyance stayed for about 2 days and that was it. Like I said I'm more worried about my fiancé who means the world to me and when he's upset, I'm upset!


  • #69
    SarahMollie
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,841 ✭✭✭SarahMollie


    To be clear - I also think this is nonsense, especially if taken from the point of wanting exclusivity for your entire engagement. I just posted to get the temperature of what people out there think.

    This notion had never really occurred to either myself of my friend who is apparently at risk of being left on the shelf.

    She just had a mild panic when it was brought up - as in "do people really think this way? what if they do?!? am i effectivly benched until whenever they decide to get married??" and got herself in a bit of a tizz.


    The girl who said it probably would be considered the wedding guru from our group of friends, she's engaged herself, has been bridesmaid 4 times and attended more weddings than the rest of us put together, we were momentarily worried she might have been on the money with this particular notion!


  • #70
    Caraconneelt
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5 ✭Caraconneelt


    Me and two of my closest friends all got engaged within six weeks of each other last summer (mine was the middle one). My wedding is the first one this june followed by my best mate 5 weeks later and the other is 2 months later in September. It really shouldn't matter at the end of the day we are all happy and we all have great fun chatting about plans and giving each other advice and contacts for different things, it's nice to have other people to chat to than just the fiancé.


  • #71
    K_P
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 577 ✭✭✭K_P


    SarahMollie wrote: »
    The girl who said it probably would be considered the wedding guru from our group of friends, she's engaged herself, has been bridesmaid 4 times and attended more weddings than the rest of us put together, we were momentarily worried she might have been on the money with this particular notion!

    She's actually probably far too caught up in wedding stuff so to be objective or to have a sense of what most people would think about this if she's been essentially in a weddingy bubble for the last few years. If you want a seamstress or don't know where to source particular paper for invites or need a DJ recommendation, she's who you ask. But probably not for this kind of stuff.

    For the record, I have one sibling. Despite a fair few years of an age gap, we were engaged and married within a few months of each other. No bad feeling, no drama whatsoever. I've travelled to family weddings abroad where two sisters got married in the exact same place 4 weeks apart. Everyone had a great time, no fuss, no arguments, no sniping about the cost of it or the knock-on effect it might have on the level of gifts received.


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  • #72
    K_P
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 577 ✭✭✭K_P


    Miss Merry Berry wrote: »
    I would love to think that I'll only ever get engaged once and married once and to be honest I don't want to share my one special time with someone else who is more selfish than me, i.e, my fiancé's sister.

    Look, I get that you've had a bad experience and I think I would be annoyed too if a family member booked their wedding for when they knew I wanted to get married, or the day before mine or whatever. It's annoying, disappointing, but, as you've unfortunately experienced, it happens.

    What I don't understand is this idea of "sharing your special time with someone selfish". You don't have to share a damn thing with her if you don't want to. Lots of friends or family who are engaged at the same time might like it as you get to discuss your wedding planning together and share in the fun of it all. But if you don't like the person, as in your case, you don't have to do anything at all with her if you don't want.

    That's what I don't understand. How is your "special time" any less special because someone else in the family is also engaged? All I can think of that would take away from it, is that family members will be asking the usual questions to and making a fuss of someone else in addition to you. I just don't see the bad etiquette in being engaged at the same time as another family member or, if you really feel that this time is extra special for you and your fiance, how another engagement makes it any less special.


  • #73
    PinkLemonade
    Closed Accounts Posts: 768 ✭✭✭PinkLemonade


    My Fiance proposed a month before his best friends wedding. I was a bit conscious to not look like I was stealing the lime light, so we held off on having the engagement party till after the wedding.
    It may have seemed like an unnecessary time from outside but given where we were in our relationship it was am important step and the timing made sense for us (finance, health, work, location etc).


  • #74
    wuffly
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 662 ✭✭✭wuffly


    The number one thing about weddings is that you will no matter what you do never ever keep everyone happy. So no point trying.
    We got engaged at Christmas and got married the following August, didn't take anyone else's engagement or wedding into account, nor would we have expected anyone else to do the same for us. The only people that were a bit shirty about our date were two guys one of my friends and one of OH's. My friend's wedding was the sat before ours, ours was a thursday he said something along the lines of 'i hope this doesn't split our friends, congrats anyway.... our friends had a week long holiday and thought we'd planned them that way on purpose. OH's friend was miffed as they got engaged a few months before us and hadn't set a date and for some reason we should have waited until after them, they got married the summer after us. We had 4 weddings the weeks of our own. And one other early in the summer, we named it the summer of love and had a ball. Everyone is still talking to us. The couple that got married the year after us had a baby last summer, we joke that they skipped ahead of us and they actually said 'sorry it wasn't planned or anything!' It was genuinely a joke but they took it seriously until they realised how utterly horrified we were that they thought we were serious! Basically some people have 'notions' about engagements/wedding etc... but unless anyone has set out to wreck either I would just get on with your own plans and enjoy it. If you think someone is going to plagiarize your day, just keep the details to yourself, in a round about way its a compliment.
    Its nice to consider other people but if your friend has to wait for a 'right time' she could be waiting a long time.


  • #75
    secondrowgal
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,093 ✭✭✭secondrowgal


    OP, it's 2016. Can't your friend propose to her BF if she wants to get married? What's she waiting around for??

    (and I mean it's 2016 as in the 21st century, not that it's a leap year or any of that rubbish).

    Your friends are two adults. One can ask the other to marry them, irrespective of gender.


  • #76
    SarahMollie
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,841 ✭✭✭SarahMollie


    secondrowgal wrote: »
    OP, it's 2016. Can't your friend propose to her BF if she wants to get married? What's she waiting around for??

    (and I mean it's 2016 as in the 21st century, not that it's a leap year or any of that rubbish).

    Your friends are two adults. One can ask the other to marry them, irrespective of gender.

    As I've said before, I posted to see if this was the norm. Clearly most think that it isnt. That in itself is useful information.

    Who proposes to who isn't really the issue, and obviously she can do whatever she wants.


  • #77
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 2,732 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    It probably sounds like the sexist question, but how much of these petty nonsenses are by the male persons?

    Why does getting married turn you into an 8 year old?


  • #78
    eviltwin
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,495 ✭✭✭✭eviltwin


    What is it about weddings and people losing all sense of perspective? Imagine this so called etiquette extended to anything else....you can't have a baby because I'm pregnant, I've just bought a new house so you can't buy one. Its sad that people lose sight of what is the most important point of it all, the marriage.


  • #79
    meeeeh
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,612 ✭✭✭✭meeeeh


    I actually think weddings are something people like to argue about. The number of bridezillas is in my opinion exaggerated, everyone can get a bit stressed out (it would be the same if you are building a house or some similar stress) but mostly people are reasonable. Out of all the people I know only one couple was acting out and it was mostly notions about their new status after they got married.


  • #80
    Mrs OBumble
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,628 ✭✭✭✭Mrs OBumble


    maisiedaisy wrote: »
    I got engaged over a year and half after my sister did, 6 months before her wedding. She didn't speak to me for a month afterwards. We had no intention of setting a date until after her wedding, for our own reasons. I had no idea my fiancée was going to propose to me, but she blamed us both for 'ruining the build up to her wedding'.

    I feel sorry for, because you cannot choose your family.

    But a number of other posters sound like they need to start making friends with grown-ups, instead of hanging out with people who have the emotional maturity of 10 year olds. (And that may be being harsh to some 10 year olds!)


  • #81
    John Mason
    Hosted Moderators Posts: 10,661 ✭✭✭✭John Mason


    My SIL got engaged the following week, my BIL got engaged, then couple of month later we got engaged.

    we got married first mind you, straight in and announced our date. There was 6 months between all the weddings


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  • #82
    noanoa
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 83 ✭✭noanoa


    Im the youngest with one brother already married.

    We got engaged, then my eldest brother got engaged and married before we did, then my younger brother also got engaged before our wedding.

    Never once did it cross my mind to be angry with them, I was delighted for them all and cant wait for my brothers wedding so I can sit back and relax!


  • #83
    Milly33
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,662 ✭✭✭Milly33


    Deleted User wrote: »
    It probably sounds like the sexist question, but how much of these petty nonsenses are by the male persons?

    Why does getting married turn you into an 8 year old?

    I would think 80 women, 20% men.. Men can actually get a bit ahhh about it all too..They get put under a lot of pressure by family also.. With the sure you cant do that..

    I cant believe someones sister fell out with them over engagements or well I can which is sadder.. But I would most defiantly say to forgive most if not all with weddings, as it may bring out the inner demon in people who normally would not have one


  • #84
    Greenmachine
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,063 ✭✭✭Greenmachine


    Times when it is not okay to announce your engagement

    1. At someone else's wedding or within a month or so.
    2. At someone else's engagement party


  • #85
    baldbear
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,633 ✭✭✭baldbear


    Getting married means nothing in the scheme of things. Its one day & no one even remembers it after a few months bar yoursleves.
    People get so hung up on all the bs surrounding it & what others think.

    Kids & been their for each other when things in life are crap is what's important.


  • #86
    Sligo1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,948 ✭✭✭Sligo1


    Greenmachine wrote: »
    Times when it is not okay to announce your engagement

    1. At someone else's wedding

    Ricky and Nate are f*cked so!


  • #87
    lazygal
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,644 ✭✭✭✭lazygal


    I know someone who's now fiance proposed at some else's wedding. Now that would bother me, if someone popped the question at our wedding.


  • #88
    Toots
    Administrators, Business & Finance Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 16,989 Admin ✭✭✭✭✭Toots


    Jesus. Proposing at someone else's wedding is about the most selfish thing you could do. I'd have a very hard time believing there was no malice behind that because nobody could be that clueless.


  • #89
    Addle
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,817 ✭✭✭Addle


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3100324/Picture-wedding-guest-proposing-girlfriend-right-newlyweds-entire-internet-outraged-look-bride-s-face-priceless.html


  • #90
    Electric Sheep
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,113 ✭✭✭Electric Sheep


    Toots wrote: »
    Jesus. Proposing at someone else's wedding is about the most selfish thing you could do. I'd have a very hard time believing there was no malice behind that because nobody could be that clueless.

    But proposing simply means asking to marry. A proposal could be made quietly between the couple with no announcement made at the wedding. Nothing wrong with that. I find public proposals ridiculous, it is making a spectacle out of what should be a private moment. Actually, I find proposals in general rather ridiculous - shouldn't a decision to marry be based on long discussion and consideration, not on being put on the spot when someone "pops the question"?


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  • #91
    Toots
    Administrators, Business & Finance Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 16,989 Admin ✭✭✭✭✭Toots


    Electric Sheep wrote: »
    But proposing simply means asking to marry. A proposal could be made quietly between the couple with no announcement made at the wedding. Nothing wrong with that. I find public proposals ridiculous, it is making a spectacle out of what should be a private moment. Actually, I find proposals in general rather ridiculous - shouldn't a decision to marry be based on long discussion and consideration, not on being put on the spot when someone "pops the question"?
    Yes but I think what's being implied here was that it was either a public proposal or else announcing the engagement at someone else's wedding, which is just a sh!tty thing to do.

    Some people like a big public proposal, it wouldn't be for me cos I'd be mortified having that many people looking at me. :o I know in my own situation we'd discussed marriage and we both knew we'd set a date sooner rather than later, but my husband still got down on one knee and asked.


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