No worries, this is not going to become a wedding blog or something, but I figured I'd really like to share my experiences along the way of planning a wedding, especially as someone who a) is a feminist and b) is a big fan of doing things differently and (hopefully) less expensive.
First of all, let me tell you: When I was a child, I was not a big fan of weddings and marriage in general. I had grown up in a family where a lot of people were divorced or didn't get married in the first place mostly because of that history of divorce. My family is pretty matriarchal due to that as well, because its the mothers (grandmothers, aunts, you name it) who usually stayed part of the family. My mum never married and always told me that she thinks that love doesn't need a wedding. And you know what? I still think she is right.
However, the older I got, the more I started dreaming of having this huge party. I like to celebrate love, and I like to break standards. So why not throw this huge party with someone you love? Sure, you could do it without the ceremony and all that fuss and without the comitment that comes with marriage. But that'd be only half the deal, right?
So generally, I'd like to get married for the experience which might be a pretty millenial approach, but here we go. The biggest problem about this is - I am also not big at long-term relationships. The half-life for my relationships is usually around 4 months. Not exactly a great basis for getting married.
Then I met my fiance. To be honest, this relationship started out like an experiment, I was by then pretty sure that I was more of a polyamorous person, he knew that he wanted monogamy - so basically the deal was "We try the monogamy thing, and see if it works for me and if not, we have a calm, mature talk about it and see what we can do about it or if we break up because it doesn't fit (which would be perfectly fine too)". So basically we did what should be the standard: Commiting to communicate. What can I say - so far, we didn't have any talk like this yet, mostly because this guy trusts me a lot and there is zero jealousy because of that. He trusts me that if I have urges I want to follow I will be honest with him, and he believes that if that happens, it just doesn't work and that would be ok too. So basically we are both very calm, not stressing out about the future too much and enjoying our time together. We are not the type for "forever" but more for "for now as long as it makes us happy" and thats great. And "for now" has lasted for 3 years already.
We had talked about our mutual wish to get married for pretty long already before there was an actual proposal, so we both knew that as long as we stayed together we'd both be in - not necessarily at any given time, but just in general.
After two and a half years, in October 2017, we moved in together for the first time and to me, it really felt like this was a huge milestone and at the same time a test to our relationship. Living with someone else is something I am not very good at either - I get easily annoyed by people when I need time on my own and past shared living situations showed that my idea of tidiness and others ideas of tidiness usually differ a lot. However, after a month, we still were absolutely chill with each other and when there were problems we managed to (boom, here it goes again) talk them out peacefully.
Now at the end of the month, something happened that made me really angry of my fiance (for the sake of the privacy of everyone involved we agreed not to disclose that any further on here - don't worry, while it was a pretty big deal to me, it wasn't something inherently toxic or even dangerous). Of course he apologized, but I still had a hard time swallowing what happened that evening.
The next day, I was in town for an appointment, and after that was done, I started to wander around a bit. I really like to do that from time to time, just walking through different shops not really buying anything, no music on my ears, just walking and thinking. And I thought about the last evening and how angry I had been... and somehow I started to randomly look at rings. Not expensive ones, actually really cheap rings. The idea to propose formed and finally I bought a set of rings for 24€ combined, asked the shop assistants for a box to put them into and to wish me luck. Because if after being so angry at him I still didn't spare even a thought to maybe ending the relationship, this was something.
So I had two rings in a box and went home, my heart beating very fast. At home, I didn't really manage to do the thing at first, but at some point, I sat on the couch and he somehow sat on a stool right in front of me which was pretty ideal, so I put the box in front of him and told him I brought something. He opened it, got all teary-eyed and started to grin like an idiot and kissed me and finally I asked "So, what do you say?" and he replied "Well, you haven't asked anything yet." It dawned on me that he was right, I hadn't. I propably blushed and went "I... I can't say it!" because it felt so weird to even think about saying those words out loud: Do you want to marry me?
So even while it was pretty awkward he did say yes, and I still like to end this story with the notion that it could all be a huge misunderstanding - because no one ever actually asked the question.
(By the way, he planned on proposing as well, wanted to do it on my birthday two weeks later.)
