Writes Save the Date reader Mara:
My guy and I have been together for seven years and engaged for two. After he proposed, we had the "honeymoon phase," where he was excited to plan a wedding, but as time has passed, we talk about our future less and less.
At one point we had talked about getting married in August, but now he's saying he'd like to travel overseas to visit his homeland in April. If a guy's serious about getting married, wouldn't he want to save his money and vacation days for his honeymoon?
Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe he needs this vacation to destress and clear his head.
In any event, I don't want to be a nag. We've talked about this big trip before, and he says he wants to visit his hometown one more time before he gets married and settles down, because once he does it will be a long time before he can go again.
So do I encourage him to book the trip? Or point out that he might want to save his money and his vacation time? And how do I get him to nail down a wedding date without seeming like a nag?
Here are my thoughts:
I feel like this might be a case of the guy not thinking things through. Since the "future" talk has kind of fallen by the wayside, it's not surprising that a wedding isn't the first thing on his mind.
Clearly the guy's itching for a trip home—although I'm confused as to why he won't be able to go back once you're married. The ball and chain don't sprout overnight, you know. They take a few years to fully mature and really weigh you down ;)
In all seriousness, I think you just need to have a heart-to-heart with your fiance to get you back on the same page. I'd sit him down with a calendar and say, "I've been thinking about wedding dates, so let's try to get our year planned out. When were you thinking about going home?" Pencil those potential dates on the calendar and then say, "I think August X, Y, and Z would be great for wedding dates. Should I start asking about venue availabilities?" Assuming he says yes, you could ask, "If you go home for X number of days, how many days will that leave us for a honeymoon?" He might come to the maybe-the-trip-home-can-wait conclusion on his own. Or he might not.
The good news is, if he really does want to go home ASAP, there's no reason your honeymoon can't wait till 2015. Rory and I were married in July and took a few days off post-wedding, but we didn't go on our honeymoon until almost three months later. It was kinda nice to decompress and recover from the wedding, then take a big trip when we were more relaxed and settled into married life.
If your guy gets totally wishy-washy and won't help you nail down a wedding date at all, I think you need to shift the talk from, "When will we get married?" to "Are you still on board with getting married?" There's a chance he's so settled into the status quo that he doesn't want to have a wedding anymore. If that's the case, you need to evaluate how important a wedding—and a marriage—are for you.
Ladies, what do you think? Should Mara press her guy to set a wedding date and postpone his trip home? Or let him go home and put off the wedding for a few more months?
Have a wedding-y dilemma of your own? Email me!