How Long Should a Couple Be Engaged for Before Getting Married?

My fiancé and I got engaged on Tuesday, August 20, 2019. We will be getting married on Friday, August 27, 2021. After dating for almost seven years, a lot of people wondered why we were waiting two years to get hitched.

Honestly, we just wanted enough time to save up for the wedding that we both envisioned. Weddings are expensive and we are paying for it ourselves. With the national average cost of a wedding being nearly $34,000, we knew we'd need to give ourselves time to prepare. *Our wedding will cost far less than the average. Neither of us hit the lottery.

On the other hand, someone else told me that wasn't enough time to be engaged. His point was that a couple shouldn't start planning a wedding right away. He thinks they should take up to a year just being happily engaged before even setting a date.

I 100 percent agree that a newly engaged couple should take the time to just enjoy being engaged, and truly honor the moment because you'll never get it back. However, I think waiting a year to set a date is too much. Greg and I booked the church and the reception venue a month and a half later. Granted, we were just afraid that someone else would book the same date we wanted, so we jumped at the opportunity to lock it in as soon as possible.

Other than that, I was too busy staring at my ring and all too willing to show it off when people asked to see it. We were blissfully happy imagining the rest of our lives together. We surveyed the financial situation and decided what was best for us.

We'll really hit the ground running at the Annual Wedding Show on Sunday, January 26. That's when we'll have the opportunity to meet with a ton of local vendors and seriously start planning. There's even going to be a VIP Hour from 11 am to 12 noon where we'll have first dibs at all the vendors to lock in our date. Who knows, we might be able to check everything off our list that day.