The first questions

Whenever I tell someone I'm engaged, I almost always get this reaction:

- OOOH! LET ME SEE THE RING!

- How did he propose?

- When's the wedding?

I kept asking my family when exactly between the proposals and the phone calls later that day were we supposed to decide a date?

On the flip side, for Seth, its:

- Great job!

- Good work!

(insert "way to bag her!" here...no one's said it, but I feel it).

And that's IF they comment.

People hear through the grapevine with me, and have been wonderful going out of their way to congratulate me. Friends from high school, childhood, even my week in Guatemala have sent me such beautiful notes.

It feels weird. Don't get me wrong- I LOVE hearing how happy people are for us! And I'm happy to reveal every detail imaginable if you want it, especially to friends and relatives (and yes, eventually you definitely do need to know the date)!

It's just interesting how suddenly, people I don't know so well take a keen interest into the superficial details of my life (thanks Facebook). The focus on the material is almost jarring...and I expect it and go right along with it. I describe in detail 'the ring', explain the process of our engagement (as my rebellion to the "he" question!), and tell them we're getting married before the end of the world. I don't mention my job interviews, my work creating a Mutual Aid and Solidarity Society, or my training for bike rides.

I'm not sure if it's because I'm unemployed that I think about it so much more...but it's interesting to think about the gender and material dynamics played out here. I submit to Seth and Seth is to be cheered for grabbing me, and then he brands me with his ring.

What do you guys think? Am I too cynical?

Welcome!

My goal for this blog is to:

a) publicly talk about some of the politics surrounding weddings, our views on it, and the process of navigating it

b) be transparent about our own wedding process

c) maybe inspire others and help our friends out in the future? Who knows...

d) ENJOY this process and HAVE FUN! And what's better than sharing all these wonders on the internet?

The process of planning a wedding has already been quite interesting, and we're not even a month after the proposals. I'd love to talk about gender dynamics, how we decided to go about this whole "proposal" thing, and our ideas for how to do this whole wedding thing...and have fun and solicit advice at the same time! So please-- COMMENT on this! Tell us what you think, ideas you have, things you disagree with...we're all ears!

Today's topic: How we got engaged.

Seth and I had some interesting thoughts about the engagement process. The whole thing came out of a late night conversation about finances:

"So...I was looking over how much we've spent on your health care this month alone, and it's been about $2000 already. Then I looked at my health care plan. And your health care would be free...if we were married. So...what do you think?"

Quite the romantic proposition. >

That conversation turned out to be the thing to spark the whole engagement. If we were going to get legally married, at what point do we decide to get married in front of our friends and family? When do we get engaged? If we're ready to get married...why not just go public about our future plans?

Eventually, we decided that we were trying to put something rational to an ultimately irrational decision. So, we decided to get engaged. I grew up imagining the traditional wedding, and imagined the proposal to be some sort of thought-out surprise, romantic, down-on-one-knee thing. At the same time, I had no desire to have this be a surprise for political reasons- Who the heck are you to decide when it's a good time for the two of us to move forward? Shouldn't that kind of decision be made jointly?

So, we looked for rings together for both of us. And decided that since we knew we wanted to get engaged, we would each propose to each other. We wanted this to be a decision, and not a default "well...let's just do it." thing. I wanted to ask him, and for him to choose me. And I wanted the same respect.

And that's how it happened. I proposed first, he proposed a week later. I can divulge more details at some other point if desired. Suffice to say that I still tear up when I think about the whole process, and my heart flutters when I see the Facebook Glory of "Ivy is engaged to Seth" pop up on my profile page.