If you’ve just gotten engaged, you’re probably bursting: You want to celebrate with each other! You want to tell your mom! You can’t wait to call your BFF and gush! But hold up, excited ones. There a few things you need to think about when it comes to figuring out how to announce your engagement.
As tempting as it might be to rush out and tell the entire world (it’s unfortunate that town criers aren’t really a thing anymore, no?), it may behoove you to slow down, wait twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and make a tiny plan. I don’t mean something ultra-detailed and laid out, step-by-step. And by all means, please go have that very gushy, super excited phone call with your friend or your mom. But before you start snapping a photo of your ring and your excited faces to post it online… make sure that you’ve thought about everyone else you’ll want to tell—and if you’re ready to hear their endless opinions about wedding plans you haven’t even started making yet. As Meg says in the #APWPlanner:
When you get engaged, it can be tempting to run out and break the news to everyone, right away. If you do that, after the first flood of congratulations, you’ll quickly find yourself fielding questions on everything from your wedding date to your colors. (Welcome to other people’s expectations and wedding planning.) No matter when you let the Facebook masses know, try to reserve some time just to celebrate your engagement together and figure out what the hell it is that you want out of this wedding, anyway.
Getting married is exciting and awesome, and it should be celebrated. But here are a few things to think about as you announce your engagement:
how to tell your family that you’re engaged
First and foremost, there’s a two to three step process that will need to be attended to soon after your engagement is official. You don’t need to go big, but something a little more special than an excited text is probably good. A phone call, a meal, etc:
tell your parents first: If your parents are involved in your lives and important to you, make sure they’re the first people to know—the last thing you want is for your mom to find out about your engagement from Facebook, after seeing the photo your BFF shared from the bar where you guys were celebrating.
Unless you have children: If one or both of you has kids from a previous relationship, tell your kids first. After your most immediate people know, you’ll also want to loop in any siblings in your life.
get everyone together: This isn’t strictly necessary, but it’s nice to invite all involved parents, parent-esque figures, and kids in your lives to have dinner together and celebrate, discuss, and generally get to know each other a little better. Maybe you guys hang out all the time, but for a lot of people, getting engaged is what makes both sides of the family realize, “Oh hey, this is real now.”
how to tell everyone else that you’re engaged
After you’ve told your immediately families, you’ll probably want to tell your friends. A lot of us have friends we love but wouldn’t include in the first wave of “OMG I’M ENGAGED!!!” celebrations—and here are a few ideas for telling those people the news:
start making phone calls: I know, I know. Phone calls! I can’t even! But if you are into using your phone for things other than social media and the news, lots of people (think extended family, for starters) would love to hear your voice when you tell them this kind of huge news. It’s a little retro for some, but picking up the phone is still infinitely more effective than a text or blanket Facebook update. If you really can’t deal, or your list of people to call is well into the dozens, email or text is totally fine. Use the confetti emoji wildly.
take it to the web: I see engagement announcements on Facebook and Instagram all the time, and I always love them. That’s probably because the ones I see online (as opposed to hearing about it in person) are the engagements of people I know and love—but who wouldn’t invite me to the wedding, because we’re not that close. So before you snap a photo of the ring(s) and get ready to post it, do a quick double check and make sure that people who are very close to you aren’t getting this news from their phone or tablet screen first.
have an engagement party: Engagement parties are totally optional, but can be fun, particularly if you’re having a long engagement. They can be as chill or as exciting as you want them to be—but they’re usually some version of pizza and drinks, or a barbecue. (We’ll actually be talking about how to host one next week.)
How did you announce your engagement? what worked well—and what didn’t?
