A wedding can be small, but still require some planning. Dress, groom attire, rings, flowers, meal planning afterwards, getting desired family members there, etc. Don’t rush them. Your distaste for their long courtship seems to be showing (get it over with, will ya?)
JUST time for dinner still has enough time for a bottle of champagne and a special dessert. CELEBRATE!
I had thoughts of welcoming the fiance to the family at the wedding speech, if I say it now, I don’t know what to say at the wedding.
I honestly am not comfortable with the fiance calling us mom and dad… maybe after they are married but not now. I don’t like Mr and Mrs either so maybe just call us by our first names ? ?
What does your spouse think? I introduce myself to my kids’ as first name to start with, saving us an awkward transition later if they marry.
Just toast to the happy couple… a speech at this time seems unnecessary. Tell them you are happy for them, and congratulations on their engagement.
Why can’t you welcome him twice?
Congratulations!
I have to say that it surprises me that they have been together for six years and they still call you Mr and Mrs? Yikes! I can’t imagine having the significant others, fiances or SILs calling me Mrs. I would really recommend you change that now. And, please, no, never ask them to call you Mom and Dad.
It’s perfectly fine to welcome him to the family. Break out the champagne!
Munchkin, I’m going to side with you. I, too, would hesitate to welcome him into the family at his point. I agree with your slight unease at the thought that the proposal will not actually lead to a marriage. I’m sure we all know of situations where the man “proposed” just to placate his partner; I’ve known couples that were “engaged” for many, many years.
My son-in-law calls me “Madre”, which for some strange reason is what my daughter, who never took Spanish lessons in her life, calls me. Before the wedding he called me by my first name, or just avoided use of names all together.His own mother treats him like three day old dog dirt, so my husband and I have made clear since their engagement that we consider him to be our son.
I never once heard my mother call my grandmother by any name at all!
Not it matters but I learned from the Internet that in S. Korea, they do not have engagement. A couple are transitioned directly from the BF/GF relationship to the H/W relationship.
Also wondering whether the relationship proceeds much faster in certain ethnic group than in other ethnic group (in general, if the main stream norm is not adopted.)
Two of my coworkers of a certain ethnic group went from the “newly-met stage” to the wedding in slightly over half a year. However, another two of my coworkers seem to have been dating with their respective GFs for around 6 or more years and the engagement is still not in the near future. It is likely that the parents of these two sets of people may have a very different idea about the period of the courting before marriage. I heard of some parents in a certain ethnic group that if the couple do not proceed to the marriage phase in a year or two, the couple may be under a great pressure by their parents (and their close friends) to stop seeing each other. Also, the criteria for dating and those for marriage could be very different. The former is less demanding than the latter.
Mcat, in our culture, it means they are milking the cow too long, long engagement. :))
LOL at DrGoogle and what is that culture may I ask ? I am expecting them in 15 minutes so will post and run.
This is what I planned to do.
- Congratulate them and tell the fiance to call us by our first names.
- Tell us we will celebrate in November when we are all back in town, including his parents. We will invite his parents to the celebration.
- Over dinner tonight we will casually ask what are their future plans (if appropriate)
mcat2 : I don’t know about that about Korean culture. It didn’t occur to me that it is not customary in Chinese culture to be engaged, I just thought my social circle is small and my knowledge and experience limited. I did not know an engagement is a promise to get married. I also do not want my D to possibly quit her great job to follow the fiance to Europe to pursue his career dreams without them being married. I don’t even know how is she going to support herself if she does not have a job (actually I do, it’s her parents). Right now expenses are split evenly down in the middle between them.
I am not upset about their long dating, I do feel a little anxious because as KKmama said, there are too many guys who are just not ready to settle down but go through the motions. I know my D is the type to want to have family eventually so time is a factor.
This is what it means in US culture.
I think that nowadays, couples are usually engaged for a year or so, which gives them enough time to plan a wedding and make all the necessary arrangements.
But sometimes, an engagement may last longer. My husband and I were engaged for three years because we were planning to get married but wanted to postpone it until I graduated from college. That’s not abnormal. Neither is a very short engagement (if you are having a very simple wedding that doesn’t require a commercial venue and a lot of vendors).
They dated for 6 years so that they can both finish college and what not. They are both working now.
They just showed up - the ring took a year to design. I feel better now.
I would love it if DS’s GF (or more exactly, her family) would have no strong objection to this extremely simple way to “get the thing done.”
However, I guess very few families would have the “luck” to have this. I may as well not have a pipe dream that we could win this “lottery” as its chance is slim to none.
Engaged = planning a wedding and letting your friends and family know about your plans.
Not engaged before being married = have to get married due to pregnancy or don’t want or need friends and family to be involved
My spouse and I were in the last category. We started to talking about planning a wedding, and realized it would be horrendous, so we just got married and told people later (including both sets of parents who apparently thought that the other set was invited and they were not, which was not the case - no one except us was there).
But what we did is considered a breach of etiquette. Etiquette in the US is to get engaged to warn the families and friends “hey, we are planning a wedding so wait for word on the date and the place!!!”. We didn’t want drama. We didn’t want to decide who to invite or not.
Yes, it could be a delaying tactic, but I think the OP needs to ask herself that if they were already living together, why would they bother to get engaged if they weren’t going to get married?
I think the worst thing anyone can do is put demands on someone else, like insist “we have to get married before we move to Europe”.
Another point - the OP does realize that unless her daughter and future spouse are rich, she or he will have to put their career on hold for having and raising children? You can’t easily raise a family if both people have jobs. I’m lucky that my spouse was able to watch the kids when he was unemployed, and vice versa when I was unemployed, and now our job situations are such that our commitments to our children are met with no career trouble.
As for calling parents in law something, it is up to the parents in law. I did however pick the term that my kids call my MIL because the one her family used creeped me out.
Plenty of people raise children while both parents have jobs. However, it requires a lot of child care and a lot of coordination and flexibility. Compromises may be necessary (for example, a parent may avoid jobs that involve a lot of travel, even though that limits career advancement), but it isn’t absolutely necessary for one parent to have no job.
MOST kids have 2 working parents. The stay-at-home parent is a minority.
In the US, and most Western countries, an “engagement” does mean a step towards marriage. Of course, engagements are broken (both so are marriages). I stupidly got engaged very, very young after being with my then-bf for ~4 years (high school sweetheart).
Good to hear it!
Enjoy your dinner and congratulations to all involved!
Re: the one her family used creeped me out.
This reminds me of some story that I read from some site: a dude from Australia went to S. Korea to meet her parents. He ended up having to have a proper “big bow” to her parents and he wrote that it was an humiliating experience (but since it lasted only 15 seconds and he went along with their custom.) Hey, he succeeded and took his bride back to Australia later.
Will your S do it (i.e., the big bow) if he has to? I doubt my S will but who knows - love could make a person blind.
I include what he wrote below in case you are interested in it. (Jihyeon is his then-GF and later wife (since last year?) I learned that there is no engagement in Korea from this dude’s personal web site.)
"Once her father arrived home, Jihyeon had her parents sit on the floor so that we could do what is called a “big bow” to them. It involves getting down on your knees and putting your head in the floor. I didn’t feel terribly comfortable doing this because I felt it was humillating, but for the sake of keeping the peace and earning mega points with her parents I did it. Once that was done (it took all of about 15 seconds) I gave the alcohol to her father and the orchid to her mother before sitting down to the feast her mother had prepared.
After eating is when things got serious. Her father fired off some questions at me which Jihyeon translated into English. “How much do you love my daughter”, “How long will you stay in Korea”, “Where will you live in Korea”, “Where will you live in Australia”, “How much money do you earn”, “Will my daughter be happy with you in Australia, a long way from Korea, her family and her friends”… There were more but I can’t remember them now. Her mother, father and sister would have a short discussion in Korean after each answer before her father fired off another question. I must have said and done the right things because her parents gave us permission to get married. "
and alotta money to afford a safe and quality day care situation if the parents have careers that have travel or are not clock punching jobs where you can count on a fixed start and end time to the day.
Yes, indeed. Or maybe helpful grandparents who live nearby.
I know that my own boss, who has two children in elementary school, is deliberately avoiding promotion to the next level because the jobs at that level involve irregular hours and travel. Her husband already has irregular hours, and there are no grandparents available.
It’s kind of a shame that she won’t be promoted because she has the potential to be very good at a higher level job. But sometimes family must come first.
Just pointing out, in response to a number of comments on this thread, that marriage isn’t a requirement for a stable family unit existing, or for the production of children. Yes, it provides a number of legal protections and all, and the literature is murky and controversial but from my (admittedly surface) reading of it there does seem to be an independent benefit of marriage to both children and parents, but if it’s grandchildren you’re after, a long engagement shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a man (or woman!) “milking” things along. Different couples have different dynamics, and are or are not headed toward marriage and raising children for different reasons.