I was just reading a thread in the business forum that discussed whether cakers would allow a bride to book a date more than a year in advance. I was really surprised to read everyone's posts in response. It seems like it is commonplace for people to have engagements that are a year or even longer. Does this seem like a REALLY long time to anyone else here? or am I just behind the times? What do couples have to do that takes so long to get ready for the wedding?

Around here a year engagement is normal.
Frankly much longer and one wonders if the couple actually will tie the knot.

Then again you could be like me, have one date and get married in Vegas lol. I did that 14 years ago and it was the best thing I ever did.

I think one year is the norm. Anything after that like 7yyrt said causes one to wonder.

Ours was 7 months, but only because October is a good month for the grandparents to come to HK, not too hot and humid, but if it had been up to us, we would've gotten married much sooner. Once we make up our minds, that is it, 18 yrs and still going strong )))

Our engagement was 25 months long, but we paid for the wedding ourselves and at 21 and 22 it took awhile to save up for the wedding of our dreams!

Ours was 9 months but my friend was 2 years...they wanted to finish school first.

I think it all depends on the situation. I have an aunt that has been engaged for almost 8 years now. They will ge married, but they have to wait until her fiances son is 18 years old otherwise his ex-wife will try to take their house/vehicles/business etc.. for child support ad that's just not something they want to deal with.(everything is in her name right now)

OThers i have known to be engaged for less that a month. They had the money to do what they wanted to do and did it as soon as they could.

I don't know a "typicall" length around here.

When my BF and I get engaged it will probably be pretty short, if any length of time as we've been together for 10-1/2 years, bought a house together, have two kids, and we've been saving for years for it. So maybe we really have been engaged that long

We were engaged for 14 months, but it was because we wanted an October wedding, but got engaged in the middle of August. We figured that the next October would be best.

I didn't start really planning until January, though.

My brother was engaged for over two years. Her parents would help pay for school until she got married, so they set the date for the summer after she finished. They dated for a short time before they got engaged, though.

I would have to say that i saw engagements for a year or more all the time.
- Brides and grooms are getting married a bit later in life (mid 20's);
- they want a nice (!) wedding; avg cost today is over $20,000.
- they are yuppies so they are busy working and sometimes taking classes at night; sometimes they are parents already with kids schedules to juggle.
- they are paying for it themselves so they are needing lots of time to save and pay for it;
- they are frugal shoppers, doing lots of comparison shopping, which takes some time;
- because of their good comparison shopping, they are taking their time to make decisions and/or booking asap to lock in good pricing.

One CC'er told me she got a call from a mom in August for an October wedding. The CC'er said to her, "THIS OCTOBER????? " The mom was surprised that the CC'er would think she meant a year from now. As the CC'er tells me the story, she told the mom, "Anything under 6 months, we consider a last minute order." Which I TOTALLY agree with!

Long engagements of a year or more are the norm, not the exception anymore. I worry about the ones who are engaged less than 6 months.

P.S. According to the Nat'l Assoc of Wedding Ministers:

- Avg length of engagement is 16 months.
- Avg bride age is 25 (first time brides)
- Avg groom age is 27.5 (first time grooms)
- Avg income for couples is $60,000


According to The Knot's 2009 survey:

- Avg length of engagement is 13.5 months
- Avg number of guests: 149
- Avg price of cake: $559 (equal approx $3.75/serving)
- Avg wedding budget: $28,385 (dow 5% from 200
- Hawaii and Cincinnati have the most casual weddings!

Times have changed...
Ours:
7 month engagement
bride age 18
groom age 27
combined income $12,000 a year, before taxes
number of guests about 75
price of cake $350 and served about 350 (Large pieces went home with the guests)
wedding budget less than $750

I was engaged for 10 months.

My uncle has been engaged to his girlfriend for over 18 years.

Whatever floats your boat

When I got home from my first date with my husband, I told my mom, "that is the guy I am going to marry." She wanted to know how I knew that after one date. I told her that I had had years to think about what type of man I would marry, and I found those qualities in him. It just took him a little longer to figure it out. We were married a year and half later. That was 22 years ago. I will give him the benefit of the doubt though, I was just divorced from a women he had been married to for 12 years, so he was very leary of getting married again. Hard to trust another women when you find out the first one you were married to had cheated several times.

Well there is the fact that one used to NOT live with someone unless they gave birth to you, or you were married.
You wanted to live together and/or have sex on a regular basis, you either got married or were considered a name I don't wish to type.
These days it doesn't seem to be considered that big a deal.

My husband gave me the engagement ring Christmas morning and 2 days later we were married. No need to wait.

Thank you for the replies! This is such an interesting topic to me. I had no idea there was such a wide range of engagement lengths! I can't believe how much people spend on weddings, either! Wow!

My husband and I were only engaged for three weeks, but that was because my dad got orders to Iraq before our wedding date. Of course, we wanted my dad to be at the wedding, and of course we knew we wanted to marry each other, so we felt like it would be fine to move up the date. I am so amazed at how the reception turned out. My mom organized everything and all of our friends came together and donated decorations, cake, time, etc...It was the most beautiful reception I've seen. We were so lucky and blessed to have the help of such great friends and to have my dad there.

It's so funny to me that six months notice on a cake qualifies as "last-minute." Around here, typical engagements are anywhere between two and eight months -- mine was four. And that was more than enough; there were still several vendors available in every category.

I used to work for a bakery where my job was to work with the brides (selling wedding cakes, invitations, etc.) and handling the office-type stuff. During the two years I worked there, we did well over 1,000 cakes. Want to guess how many of those gave us over a year notice? One. I remember, because I had to create a new folder in the filing cabinet! A month notice was not at all unusual -- we thought "last-minute" was a week or less. We even had a couple of people come into the bakery on the way from the wedding to the reception, expecting us to just have wedding cakes on hand to sell to them!

Many venues around here book up 8-12 months in advance, if not more, so the engagement length is often dictated by the availability of the venue. I was engaged 10 months, and I was lucky to find my date open, not just for the venue, but the photographer, cake, florist, everything!

We were engaged for eight months.....got married towards the end of April and were considered by most of the vendors to be out of the peak season, so there were plenty of options.

I got married October 2009 and got engaged in very early August, so it was a four month engagement. (We had known each other for almost two years, been dating a little less than a year.) We wouldn't live together until we were married, so I think that definitely makes a difference. We were both done with school, so what were we waiting for? I was 25, he was 27 (so perfectly average there). I did have some money in savings (parents and grandparents each chipped in about $2,000 and I spent about $4,000 for a total of $8,000 for wedding and reception), and we basically just chose the type of wedding we could afford in that amount of time. I really didn't think 4 months was all that short, but apparently it is. When I was shopping for a wedding dress everyone automatically assumed that I wanted a dress for a year and four months away, not just four months away! I had to put a rush on the dress that I ordered. There were about 200 ppl there and I (along with friends/family) made cupcakes for the wedding for a cost of less than $200 for ingredients. We had a blast making all the cupcakes. We had different flavors (chocolate chip cooking dough, key lime, cinnamon swirl, white chocolate raspberry cheesecake, etc), made them look pretty and set them up nicely on cupcake stands. We made them 3 weeks before the wedding and froze them (completely done - icing and all), so we wouldn't have any added stress right before the wedding. They turned out great and we had so much fun making them!! We just made a very small cake for us to cut.

We were engaged for about 14 months, but for several reasons, including we were paying for things ourselves, so we needed some time to figure out costs vs. savings; we took our time comparing venues, caterers, cakes, etc. That was tricky because both of us worked full time, I volunteered with the city ambulance department, and we were both taking classes, so trying to find time to "shop around" was sometimes challenging.

When I went dress shopping, and my sister found this out as well, 99% of the dress shops recommend 6+ months to get your dress! They claim this allows for time to order, time to alter, etc. The venue we chose was popular for a host of other purposes/gatherings, so finding a time was challenging. Then we also learned that we had specific times in the spring when we could/couldn't get married in the Catholic Church because of Lent, Easter, etc. We also had to consider the time of year with regards to friends/family traveling from all over the country; a winter wedding would likely ensure those in northern New England could face travel difficulties due to snow/ice.

So, yeah...what we were hoping for time-wise and what we ended up waiting were 2 different things, but it all worked out in the end.