Ahead, discover a few solid reasons to extend your engagement (and bonus: they double as great answers to the annoying question, “Why haven’t you gotten married yet?!”).
The average couple gets engaged after two years of dating, and the average engagement is about 13 months long. While others may have opinions on the matter, the length of your engagement is your business, and yours alone.
True, some couples want to marry as soon as possible, but lots of couples wait two years or more to tie the knot after a proposal — in fact, singer/actress Jennifer Hudson has been engaged for almost nine years! — so there’s clearly no rush to say “I do.”
You have more time to save money for your wedding.
Plain and simple, weddings are expensive. In the old days, the parents of the bride likely paid for all or most of the wedding. But today, about half of couples pay for their own wedding, and if you’re in your late 20s or early 30s, you probably don’t have heaps of extra cash lying around to fund a big party. Waiting a while longer to say “I do” provides an opportunity to save up some extra cash to pay for the wedding you want.
You have more time to plan your wedding.
If you’re not already the planning type, putting together a wedding can be a daunting task. Choosing vendors, a venue, a wedding party, and a formal outfit are big tasks, so give yourself some breathing room by having a longer engagement. You’ll also be more likely to get the venue and vendors you want (especially if you’re getting married in an area where there aren’t lots of wedding vendors), since they probably won’t be booked up yet.
You can live together and get to know each other’s habits.
Unless you’re waiting till after marriage to live together, having a long engagement provides an opportunity to cohabitate with someone you’re fully committed to, before you’re legally bound to each other. This may sound pretty unromantic, but if you haven’t yet lived with your significant other, you may want to try it out before getting married — you’ll learn more about each other and be stronger as a couple because of it.
You can spend time planning your family’s financial future.
A decidedly unromantic task, to be sure, but thinking about your financial future is an important one for two people on the verge of marriage. During a long engagement, you and your significant other have plenty of opportunity to really sit down and plot out your financial priorities — before your money, bills, and debts become shared. Talk about whether or not you want to buy property in the future, have children, or go back to school, and how you’ll pay for all of those things. These are really important discussions to have before walking down the aisle.
You have more time to pay off your student loans.
Like we said above — after marriage, your spouse’s debts become your debts. So if one of you has a massive student loan (or some other kind of debt) a long engagement will allow you to pay that down before joining finances with your partner.
Being engaged is fun!
In spite of all the weighty financial realities we’ve outlined thus far, the truth is that being engaged is just plain fun. Taking your time with wedding planning, enjoying those little moments living together, staring down at your engagement ring, and calling your significant other your “fiancé(e)” can be a real pleasure—and time that you want to savor. Enjoy it!
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