13
votes
What's your proposing/marriage story?
I'm interested in knowing how fellow Tilders became engaged and subsequently married. Let's just say I was given some personal reasons to think about the subject lately...
I'm interested in knowing what steps led you and your significant other to consider the possibility, how you became engaged, how long did you know each other beforehand, etc...
You know, the kind of thing someone that never considered marriage as an option is utterly ignorant about :P
Any advice?
My wife proposed to me. At the time we had been together for apx. 13 years and had two kids together. She took me out to dinner and her brother and his gf watched our kids for the evening. The actual proposal was in a nice little hotel room (she'd planned to do it over dinner, but felt it was too public).
The engagement lasted a whopping 7 years and last fall we finally got married! So now we've been newlyweds for 6 months.
Respect, but that's kinda insane in my culture! Our families would throw us to the wolves or something hahaha
Besides the legalities, I don't really get what is the big difference between living together for years and literally acting like a married couple in every way and doing so after fulfilling a certain ritual or legal requirement.
Edit: I should add that in Brazil, when certain conditions are met, you are de facto legally married wether you go to city hall or not.
We were driving along route 1 in Iceland, on our way back to Reykjavik and I pulled the car over to look at the view (it was a good view, the sun was setting because it was mid-afternoon in January). I gave my girlfriend a ring box and she took out the ring I'd made and put it on her little finger (I often give her jewellery, this wasn't unusual) at which point I said "no, it goes on the other finger" and pointed to her ring finger.
And that was that. I never actually proposed, technically. We'd been together 14 years at that point, living together for 13.5 of those years, and around six months earlier she'd said how sad she was that I didn't want to get married. I've never been interested and I'm still not particularly bothered about it. But she likes it, and since we had a kid it does make a number of legal things considerably easier. So that's two perfectly good reasons for me.
That is a lovely story.
Very interesting to see how different cultures experience marriage. There are also certain legal protections that are more less essential depending on the country's law and welfare system.
Congrats, mrbig!
My husband and I started dating in 2010. Gay marriage wasn’t legal in the US then, save for a few states, and the horizon for it was pretty grim at the time. Over half the states in the country had amended their constitutions to block it, solidly codifying its prohibition into their founding documents. It was also not acknowledged federally, so even if we lived in and got married in a state that allowed it, we would still be seen as single by the federal government.
There’s a common image of gay people yearning and aspiring for marriage, and there certainly are those that did, but something that I think is hard for a lot of people to understand is that there are also a lot of people who weren’t “holding out” for gay marriage. My entire life I’d been told “this isn’t for you”, and my heart hardened over time as a result of that. Why waste my time or energy wanting something I wasn’t ever going to have?
My husband and I have been mutually monogamous the entire time we’ve been together, and we moved in with one another relatively quickly. As the years passed and our intentions for the future became more clear, we became functionally married in that we intended to remain together and mutually monogamous indefinitely. I was of the opinion that we wouldn’t ever get “married” married because it wasn’t an option, and if it ever became one it would feel like a consolation prize. It’s like a birthday party where everybody else but me gets served cake. When someone then shows up to my house three weeks later and offers me a slice, am I supposed to be happy about that? Should that be a source of joy for me, or just a further slap in the face?
There’s a Key & Peele sketch about a gay couple after a legalization announcement and, suffice it to say, after it became legalized nationwide, I was Key. Not because I didn’t love my husband or was worried he was the “wrong choice” (he wasn’t and never has been 🥰), but because I’d built up a lot of bitterness about marriage as an institution. A lot of people expected us to run out and get married as soon as it was legal, but to me what we had was already functionally a marriage, and I resented having to redefine that according to terms and through institutions that for so long had been soaked in prejudice against people like me.
It took a long time for my heart to thaw, and I credit my husband for his unconditional love for me, as well as his incredible patience. He had always wanted to get married. From the very start. Instead, he waited for me to be okay with it for years, even after legalization. There wasn’t a formal proposal — it was more a series of conversations that, over time, solidified into intention and then planning.
The other timeline we were working on here wasn’t mine, but my parents’. I didn’t want to get married without them present, but they weren’t ready for that. I’ve shared on Tildes before the frictions about growing up gay in my conservative Christian household, and it has taken my parents a lot of time to become okay with the idea that their son loves and lives with a man. Marriage was, to them, a religious institution, and so I assumed that should I ever choose to do it, they would be unable to support me in it.
Their hearts, too, have thawed over time, and eight years into our relationship, both they and I were ready. My husband and I got married in a small courthouse ceremony at our city. My parents flew out to attend it. His parents and his sister and her husband were there too. His mom and sister were so proud to show off their rainbow earrings. His dad and brother in-law were so proud to show off their rainbow socks. I was so proud that my parents were choosing to stand there alongside me, brightening my beautiful rainbow moment with their presence rather than dimming its shine through their absence. The marriage itself, and their support of it, wasn’t something I had ever expected to happen. That moment was small, private, intimate, and staggeringly beautiful. It was all of the colors, all at once.
I am not close with my extended family. My parents’ hearts have changed, but my extended family’s hearts remain closed to people like me and my husband. Meanwhile, my husband comes from a culture where extended family is everything. In the Before Times we were constantly meeting up to celebrate: birthdays, graduations, holidays, promotions, life events, “because it’s Saturday” — they love to find any excuse to get the family together and share food, laughs, and company.
My husband’s family supported the private ceremony, but they also were not about to let that GIANT opportunity to get together pass them by. The message we got from all of them, constantly, was WHEN 👏 IS👏 THE 👏 CELEBRATION? 👏
So, we planned an actual wedding ceremony, even though we were already legally married.
I’d spent my life being resentful of marriage as an institution, and in particular the wedding industry for its excesses, so we basically threw a “classy party on a budget” rather than a full-fledged wedding.
What I didn’t expect was how much it would mean to me. My immediate family: parents, siblings, and their spouses flew out for it. His entire extended family was there, as well as our friends. I can honestly say it was the most beautiful, wonderful, magical day of my life. The warmth that we felt from everyone; the support from so many — any remaining hurt in my heart that day was overwritten with overwhelming love, in one fell swoop. All of the colors, all at once. Again. And even brighter this time.
My husband and I recently crossed the 10 year mark of our relationship. Even though we only “married” not too long ago, it feels like we’ve been married a lot longer than that. But that “married” felt like it was something private — shared between us, but not with the world. Now, the world knows. In our families, in our friends, in society, we now see ourselves, together, reflected back — happily, wonderfully, and lovingly married.
That is something I never, ever, thought I would ever be. I spent so many years thinking I would be alone and unloved forever — that I was broken and undeserving of happiness or joy. I cannot express in words how happy, how joyous I am that I was wrong. To anyone reading this who feels like I used to: I want you to know that, no matter who you are, and no matter what the rest of the world might say about you or people like you, I hope that one day you get the opportunity to learn firsthand how wrong you are too. No matter who you are, you are lovable and you deserve to be loved.
You deserve all of the colors, all at once. Don’t let anyone, not even yourself, tell you otherwise.
I’m not crying, you’re crying!
Seriously though, what a cute story. I have zero desire to get married, but I love stories like this.
I didn't get into it in my own post about this because I felt it was getting a bit long and I really wanted to focus a bit more on the proposal story, but I just wanted to echo that as a gay woman who also grew up in a conservative Christian family, I felt a lot of the same things as you about marriage. I expect it's not uncommon for gay folks of a certain age to have complicated feelings about marriage as an institution, having seen it go from illegal to celebrated.
Although in Canada it was legalized federally quite a bit sooner than in the USA, I was still a teenager before that happened and like you believed that marriage was For The Straights. (On top of that, there were some issues in my family in particular with bad marriages.) My cynicism evaporated over the course of years as it became more normalized and I sorted out my feelings on the matter.
So thank you for sharing and putting that to words. And thanks for chatting about how you dealt with this in your actual wedding and sharing how that felt too! It's given me some comfort thinking about what I will do for my own (future, not-yet-fully-planned) wedding.
I love telling this story. There are going to be some details skipped over that I would normally include, since this is a much more public space.
Proposal
We'd been living together for about a year, after moving across the country (US). She has a fondness for Hyperbole and a Half, and in particular the alot. So I had found someone on Etsy who made stuffed plush Alots, and asked them to make me one with a small modification, a ring-sized pouch on it's front. It was supposed to arrive in time for me to propose on her birthday, but it was a bit delayed. Instead I woke up a little early, and placed it in the middle of the floor between her side of the bed and the door, and waited for her to wake up. When she saw it she was of course happy and excited, but didn't realize what it was actually about until I pulled the ring out of it's pouch and did the traditional one-knee thing.
Wedding
Now the really fun part of the story.
My wife is not what you'd consider a "girly girl". She maintained her excitement about planning a wedding for about 2 weeks, and finally proclaimed in exasperation "fuck this, lets go to a courthouse and be done with it".
Nay, says I. I told her I wanted a small wedding with friends, and was willing to plan everything on one condition. She was not allowed to know when it was happening, or what the plan actually was.
She agreed.
In the next few months, I had a friend of hers ambush her and take her to pick a dress and get fitted. Meanwhile, I planned out the day, recruited friends and family, and prepared. I proposed in Feb, we got married in Oct.
The morning of, she awoke to find me gone from the house. This was expected, as my mother had come to visit (both of our parents live out of state), and we where going to have a day just the two of us and go see some museums.
That was the story anyway. About 8am she got a phone call from an unknown number, and someone in a gruff voice proclaims "we've kidnapped Omnicrola, bring us the Macguffin by 5pm or else" and hangs up. This was in fact my younger brother. Sixty seconds later, my youngest brother calls her, tells her he's with "The Agency" and have been monitoring the situation. They're sending a car for her in an hour, be ready!
A black sedan pulled up to the apartment an hour later. The driver is a mutual friend, and in the back seat is my youngest brother (whom she knows). He hands her a manila folder filled with random conspiracy-esque paperwork I found on the internet, with lots of blacked-out sections. In the back however, are pictures of me tied up in a basement, with bruises photoshopped on me. My brother explains the premise to her; I've been kidnapped because some Bad Guys mistook my wife for someone that has the same name and appearance, but is an international spy 1. So they need to find clues as to where I'm being held so I can be rescued.
The rest of the day unfolds as a kind of scavenger hunt. At each stage she is driven around and accompanied by friends so that all the steps actually happen, because the point is to actually get her to her wedding, not solve the puzzles.
Her first clue leads her to a local spa, where she "coincidentally" is joined by a friend and has a massage and a mani/pedi. On the way out the door, the receptionist hands her the next clue.
That leads her to our favorite sushi bar, where she enjoys some lunch.2 About an hour later, my other brother shows up in sunglasses and a very fake mustache (on top of his actual mustache), drops off another clue in an envelope, and leaves without saying a word.
That clues leads her the house of a coworker of hers (who happens to be a hair stylist), where she has her hair done. As that nears completion, there's a knock on the door. Outside are both my mom and her mom (whom she did not know was in town) wearing some very fake mustaches and sunglasses, with another clue.
This in turn leads to her friend's house (the one from the spa), who has gotten the dress+accompaniments from our apartment, and helps her get into her dress. A little while later, there's yet another visitor at the door, and it's both her dad and my dad, with fake mustaches on top of their actual mustaches3 and the next clue.
The last clue leads to a cemetery, and she's driven there by my brother and the sedan driver from earlier. This is where the supposed "Macguffin" is that the Bad Guys want. Upon arriving at the cemetery, my brother has a short monologue about how he's from the future and has been sent back in time to stop her wedding. He then pulls a nerf gun out to shoot her, but is first shot by the driver. Gasping his last, he shoots the driver, and they both fall down, and the final clue falls out of my brother's jacket. I believe it mentioned something about laser cat wars. But more importantly, it directs her to walk through the stand of trees nearby. When she does, she finds she is at a the house of a mutual friend of ours 4.
As she walks up to the house, she's directed to go into the basement. This is where she finds me tied to a chair, conveniently in a tuxedo. So she unties me, and we go out to the back deck, where about 30 of our friends and family are waiting along with a close friend who's officiating. There are no chairs, everyone is just standing on the deck. When she appears everyone separates to form an isle down the middle and as she walks down the each one hands her a single white rose, which forms her bouquet.
We had a simple short ceremony that lasted maybe 15 minutes, and spent the rest of the evening enjoying food and the company of our friends.
And that's how I got married. Still married, 8 years later!
1My wife enjoys a good spy movie, and had remarked on several occasions that she thinks she'd make a great spy. So, here we are.
2 During lunch, the "conspiracy folder" of pictures and documents is on the table, and the waitress gradually becomes very concerned and confused until they explain what's happening.
3Fake mustaches are hilarious, I have so many pictures of this.
4My wife has a notoriously bad sense of direction. She's been to this house many times, but I depended on her bad sense of direction to surprise her with where she actually was. Also, the "paparazzi" where following her around most of the day taking pictures. The paparazzi is actually the owner of the house here.
Dang nabbit, why even say that?
Now my imagination is running wild.
(great story, you both sound like a fun couple)
My partner (we're both women) proposed to me after three years of being together. We had talked about it beforehand as it being basically a foregone conclusion that we'd get married - we'd already lived together for about a year and a half at that point and had chatted about the kind of rings we'd want (a bit more traditional for me, a bit edgier for her). I had vague plans for proposing to her on a vacation we had planned, but she got to me first.
She had told me at the beginning of October that she wanted to do a drawing every day with a book of prompts that I had bought her. I love her art, she does tattoo-style stuff that's really fun and whimsical. When she didn't bring it up again after I assumed she had just quietly dropped the idea, so I didn't press her on it.
Then, on Hallowe'en nearing midnight (god I love my goth gf), she presented me with the book as a gift. I flipped through it, and each prompt she had interpreted in a way that was about something we had done together or some aspect of our lives together. "Totem pole" for instance was an interpretation of our cats sitting on top of each other. "Valentine" was a reference to a Valentine's day concert we had wanted to attend, but that got cancelled due to a terrible blizzard. Stuff like that.
The last prompt was a drawing of the ring she had bought and said "will you marry me?" and my goodness I'm such a sap I'm tearing up just remembering it, haha.
We're still "just" engaged. Our intent was to get married in 2020, but the pandemic kind of threw a wrench in things. I'm also not anxious about being married - it will actually make some stuff easier, and knowing that if anything were to happen to me she'd automatically get a lot of my assets gives me some peace. I am happy to imagine growing old with her and building a life with her.
But I am a bit anxious about having a wedding. It's intimidating to plan and I feel a lot of pressure, most of it likely self-imposed, about it going well.
That proposal story is SO CUTE. I’m so happy for you two!
Best of luck with the wedding, and the best advice I can give is to keep it simple and focus on what’s important. A lot of people get caught up in minute details and micromanaging and can miss that the big picture stuff and most importantly, how the two of you feel, is the most important part. My husband and I pretty much made our decisions around the guiding questions “will we be happy?” and “will our guests be happy?” And, now that it’s all said and done, I think we all were!
Also, a good photographer is worth their weight in gold. A lot of people try to save money by skimping on their photographer or having a friend who has a photography hobby do it, but wedding photography is an art — knowing where to be when to find the best moments, having an instantaneous instinct for good aesthetics and framing, knowing how to work well with different environments. Paying for someone who’s skilled and experienced will get you amazing photos that truly capture the beauty and joy of the day.
That is a beautiful story, thank you very much for sharing.
I see that many stories, particularly in north america, share a common cinematographic/theatrical vibe. People make great efforts to create elaborate memories and that is really beautiful.
Maybe that is why there's a focus on actually getting married as a discrete step even after many years living together and even having children?
There seems to be lots of expectations regarding the proposal and the event itself that go very deep!
My personality is probably a bit colder and practical (although romantic in my own spartan way?), I don't see myself doing anything too elaborate. I would gladly take part in something like that to please my partner though.
I proposed to my partner back in January. I surprised her with a weekend away which was basically our first time leaving the house for any substantial time since early 2020. She claims to be completely surprised but I'm not sure I believe her.
As far as our relationship, we met and then immediately had to do long distance for about 6 months, and then she just moved in with me and we've been living together for about 4 years now, so realistically not much changed between before and after getting engaged, haha.
My girlfriend told me I was being "very American" because I initially suggested living together for a long time before getting married.
But I guess that, from my very Brazilian nordestino point of view, if it looks like marriage and works like marriage, why not just call it like that and have some legal advantages as well? Not super romantic, but still :P
From a practical standpoint, living together first is a really good idea. Romance is great, but it's the window dressing on a relationship, not the bones. (I'll come back with my story later)
For us the living together was mostly due to the fact that I had moved across the country for work, and she ended up following.
I think if we'd both stayed in the area we originally met, it probably would have been longer before we moved in together (although I'm sure we would have basically been living together.)
That said, I think I also probably would have proposed faster because like you said, in our current case we were basically already married, haha.
I'm planning on proposing to my girlfriend this year so I am taking notes :)
My wife took me to a bar for an afternoon beer. We were sitting outside on the patio. I was fairly drunk and smoking when she asked if I would marry her. I said, "I probably would but I never figured I'd get married." She leaned back and turned straight toward me saying, "No, I'm asking you to marry me. Not a hypothetical. Fuuuuuck."
I like your wife.
Pretty simple story - we had been dating for 3.5 years and went on a west coast camping trip. One night we were lying on the beach under the stars, looking out at the Pacific and I figured it was time. I got down on one knee and we were both so nervous we fumbled the hand off so we paused for a brief interlude while we searched frantically for the ring in near-darkness. We found the ring, she finished saying yes and we were married two years later.
My wife and I met online in 2008, well before it was normal, and across borders, which complicated things, so in turn our relationship was a bit weird. I don't remember ever proposing, I think we just talked about getting married and making it easier to immigrate and we both accepted it. We married in 2009.
I have a feeling she'd tell a different story, but we're still going strong after all these years so must've done something right.