Caleb and I are only having a three-month engagement.
Crazy, right?
A few of you have reached out and asked why we chose to have such a short engagement, and today I thought I’d tell you that story :)
Why We’re Having a Three-Month Engagement…
In November 2019, my apartment complex put a notice on the door of my roommate and my apartment that our lease was going to be up in January and if we were going to renew our lease we needed to do that soon.
My roommate and I wanted to live together again… However, how long we signed our lease for was dependant on Caleb and my plans for the future.
So, I began thinking about when Caleb and I could logically get married. (I overanalyze EVERYTHING!)
- I figured we wouldn’t get married in the Spring of 2020, because we would have needed to be engaged already for that to happen.
- Caleb is a youth intern. So his summer was going to be filled with a youth camp, a week of backyard Bible clubs, and a mission trip to New York. (All of which ended up getting canceled due to Covid.)
- In the fall, I would start teaching again so getting married in August was out.
- His family business serves ice cream at a local university’s football games from September-December, so getting married in the fall was out. (These football games were also canceled. Yayyy Covid.)
- Then, I figured that getting married around Christmas or New Year’s would be CRAZY!
Thinking this through made me realize the soonest we would get married would be January 2021.
So one night during November 2019, I told Caleb that my roommate and I were needed to renew our lease and we needed to decide how long to renew it for. So, I thus needed us to discuss the soonest we could see ourselves getting married.
I told him all the thoughts I had about why 2020 wouldn’t work because of our schedules, and he agreed that January 2021 would probably be the soonest.
“And January 22nd is on a Friday that year,” I continued, “We could get married then and only have one anniversary date to remember!”
“Ooh I like that,” he said.
Caleb asked me to be his girlfriend on January 22nd, 2017. Technically we didn’t have our first date until February 4th that year, but we still consider January 22nd to be our anniversary.
Anywho, my roommate and I signed a lease for another year and I continued to overanalyze if I was ready to even become engaged yet.
And then 2020 came.
And I’m sure you are aware of the craziness that year brought to our nation and world.
Ironically, it was the shelter-in-place orders that made me realize how much I wanted to be married to Caleb. I didn’t want to be stuck in my apartment with my roommate. I wanted to live with him! (Read this post to learn why we aren’t living together before we get married.)
I told him in July of 2019 not to propose until he knew I was for sure ready to get married to him. Even after I realized in May 2020 that I was 100% ready, I didn’t tell him until August. (More details as to why in this post.)
He didn’t press me about it either. Once I told him in August that I was ready, he said, “I would have proposed already if it wasn’t for Covid and all…”
I shrugged. I wasn’t necessarily ready before that point anywho. During that conversation, I asked him if he still thought January 2021 would be a good time for us to get married. He said he still thought so.
Then we began our hunt for a ring. We bought the ring online on September 24th and he proposed exactly one month later. The day we got engaged, we confirmed that January 22nd would be our wedding date. This meant we’d only have a three-month engagement, but really we’ve been mentally preparing for a January wedding all year.
Three reasons why we’re having a three-month engagement:
1. We wanted to get married on our dating anniversary, so it just worked out that way.
2. January 22nd falls around Martin Luthar King Jr. day so I’d have a three day weekend each year around our anniversary. That means we can easily take anniversary trips if we want.
3. We’ve been dating for 4 years (well, it will be 4 years when we get married). We’re just so ready to finally be husband and wife!
There have been so many more benefits to a short engagement that I discovered after we got engaged, and I’ll share those in a follow-up post :) Presently, I have no regrets about only having a three-month engagement. In fact, it feels like it’s lasting forever!
If you’re married, let me know in a comment how long your engagement was. Or, if you’re not married, how long do you want your engagement to be someday?
Blessings,
Kara
(Follow me on Instagram @kara_beth17 for updates about Caleb and me ❤️)
