Updates: “Not Quite Ready for the Aisle” Responds
It’s time again for “Dear Wendy Updates,” a feature where people I’ve given advice to in the past let us know whether they followed the advice and how they’re doing today. After the jump, we hear from “Not Quite Ready for the Aisle” who was afraid her boyfriend was going to propose and suggest as 12-12-12 wedding to compete with his brother who was planning an 11-11-11 wedding. “I know that I want to marry this guy,” she wrote, “but I am right now feeling a little panicked that this might actually happen. (In a year and a half, no less!).” Keep reading to see if her boyfriend did indeed propose.
This update is way overdue. But, I finally confessed to my boyfriend that I had written to you about him proposing, so I thought it was a good time to write you back. I think that he understood that writing to you meant that it is/was a big deal to me. I told him how I am scared of a proposal (he hasn’t proposed yet, FYI), but am still excited for it to happen. It’s hard for him to understand. So I told him that I wrote to you, and he read your response and really like your “not only on the same page, but reading the same book” line. I still don’t think that he can wrap his head around the whole scared/excited emotions, but he at least tries to. We have had a couple conversations since I wrote you, including this one, and we definitely are on the same page of the same book.
Thank you so much for your story of marrying Drew, and for all the comments about being scared of something that is such a good thing. I thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t all “Finally!” about a proposal. I feel like there are women in our society who will do literally anything for a proposal, and so I thought that there must be something wrong if I was having anxiety about it. Hearing the nervousness of so many people entering into marriage, or just thinking about it, made me feel so much better and like I was definitely not alone and weird. I do take marriage very seriously, not as a civil or religious thing, but just as a promise you make to someone while a bunch of people watch that you can’t ever break. My boyfriend and I both come from divorced parents, and so we both have a firm “no divorce” stance on marriage — we both feel that it is a lifelong commitment.
This past Christmas my boyfriend made a couple hints that he was going to ask me, and while he didn’t, I did find myself being much more accepting of it, and more excited about it, even though it still scares me.
As for the co-habitation debate, which was very interesting to read, living together is another step on the way to marriage for my boyfriend and me. It was not out of convenience or finances — I know that after these two years of living together, and the long engagement that has been agreed upon, I will be able to walk down the aisle knowing that I am making a good decision- one that I have thought long and hard about and one that I have taken steps to ensure is right.
Thanks again!
Thanks for the update. Sounds like you two are on your way to a happy future together.
If you’re someone I’ve given advice to in the past, I’d love to hear from you, too. Email me at [email protected] with a link to the original post, and let me know whether you followed the advice and how you’re doing now.
I just wanted to say a HUGE “ZOMG THANK YOU” for this original post – I am pretty sure it was the post that led me to eventually stumble upon A Practical Wedding, which has been SAVING MY SANITY. Over the past year I’ve transitioned from the OH GOD WE MIGHT GET MARRIED (pre-engaged, freak-out stage) to wait, are we ever going to get engaged? to woo engaged to OH CRAP IN HELL I HAVE TO PLAN A WEDDING AND WHAT DO PEOPLE *MEAN* I HAVE TO DO ALL THIS CRAP I DON’T LIKE. A Practical Wedding has been keeping me from strangling wedding vendors (and everyone else who keeps judging me and my super-awesome-significant-other’s choices), one day at a time. So, THANK YOU.
I looooovvvveeee A Practical Wedding. Definitely has kept my sanity intact and made the whole thing enjoyable again. I even read the book on my Kindle.
BTW, congratulations!
I would love for any piece of the whole wedding-planning process to be anything CLOSE to enjoyable. But, I have a bad habit of trying to make everyone happy, and goodness knows that will never happen.
My sister thinks she should be my maid of honor (long story there – basically, I thought long and hard about having her in the wedding at all and decided not to), my mother can’t believe that I refuse to have fresh flowers, and the other day one of my friends was all freaking out over the fact that I bought black shoes to wear, because “black shoes are not wedding shoes” or something.
I went to the APW book talk last night in Cambridge, MA and dragged my fiance along – he LOVED it and now wants to actually read the book (I’ve been asking him to read it for the past few weeks). And added the blog to his RSS reader. I feel like I have won a gigantic victory for wedding sanity.
(and thank you for the congratulations!)
Thanks for the website!!
I wish I’d checked it out 6 months ago!!!!
I wish I could bookmark the website for future use, but that might look kind of nuts when my boyfriend uses my computer…
Do you use Google Reader? Just add the RSS feed to your reader. Sure, “wedding” is in the title, but it’s mainly smart people (not just women!) talking about life, marriage, relationships, and navigating through adulthood. They do an annual survey of the readers and a significant chunk fall into the “pre-engaged” category (which included me when I was at first a reader).
Bahahaha same here 😛 I sneak looking at wedding dresses using the glorious Incognito Window, not because I’m angling to get married, just because they’re pretty. I just don’t want my boyfriend to find them and get all nervous that I have Wedding Brain or something – he’s still at the stage where the idea of getting married is ZOMG hyperventilation scary, even though he’s said he wants to be married eventually 😛
Thanks. I just added it to my wishlist, and will go ahead and buy it tomorrow when I have more time to actually “shop”. *sigh* My first two were easier, until I was told the second time that jeans and a t-shirt wasn’t acceptable.
This time, we’re having fun with it. Kids want us to do an Addams Family theme.
Good grief. The sooner your boyfriend dumps your neurotic ass and gets the hell out of this relationship, the better it’ll be for him.
Because if he doesn’t, I predict that in ten years he’ll be listening to you having a meltdown because the nursery curtains are the wrong shade of peach and wondering how he can go on.
You’ve been living with him for two years. You’ve agreed, in theory, to a long engagement. And you’re STILL panic-stricken that he might ask you to marry him? WTF, woman! The choice has been made… you’re just wallowing in the “romantic” drama of it all.
Stop being such a freakin’ high maintenance prima donna and get over yourself.
… awwwwkward…
*shrug* I can see the point GTR is trying to make, but at the same time I agree with you.
After two years, she’s not ready. That’s fine. If it was 10 years, then reasonably if she was over 30, we’d have to question why the hell she was wasting the male’s time. A marriage is supposed to be a lifelong commitment, and the fact that she is nervous and trying to be slow about it shows that she is being responsible about it, rather than a 2 hour courtship followed by a quick trip to Vegas.
I hope she discovers exactly why she is hesitant on HER part though. Besides the fact that her parents have had rocky marriage issues. We are not our parents.
i think you missed the point…. lol
MOA, LW. Sorry to say it, but if you really wanted to marry him, you wouldn’t be feeling this way at this point. I’ve been there before: I thought I wanted to marry him, just not yet, not yet, not yet. Really, I wouldn’t admit to myself that I didn’t want to marry him.
I finally broke up with him and found the right guy – and all those anxieties about marriage and all that desire to push it into the vague future disappeared.
Move on – it’s time to find the guy who IS right for you.
I think its ok to be excited and scared at the same time. To me, it just means you take the forever part seriously. I felt like you before my husband proposed, and I realized it was because I didn’t like that I would never 100% know that we wouldn’t get divorced. And if you hate taking risks (I’m a terrible gambler), this can make you nervous. In the end you just have to decide if your boyfriend is worth the risk.