I’m Engaged! What Now?

It’s been a while since I just sat down and had a good old heart-to-heart on here. A pour-your-words-out, typing-furiously, this-is-what-I’ve-been-doing-lately style catch-up. I’ve busied myself with writing helpful travel guides and inadvertently neglected the diary aspect of While I’m Young that I loved so much back when I started blogging.

I’ve missed writing personal updates and I figure that now, as a new chapter of my life begins, is a good time to write a little update.

What I’ve been doing lately

Since coming back to the UK about 18 months ago, I’ve been working on my blog and freelance career, and – gimme a sec to be a bit sickening – have loved being back with my man. Brunching in Dubai was fun, but eating breakfast with him in our kitchen is better. I think I naturally had a lot of stuff I needed to feel I’d done before I could feel satisfied with The Simple Life, and I’m finally there. I’m not exactly burning my passport, but I feel at peace with my wanderlust and am happy to make the best of life in the UK, planning micro adventures when I can.

Not many fellas will stick with you when you flit off to the Middle East for over a year (and to NYC for three months shortly after we got together), and I feel very fortunate to have Tom in my life. It can’t be easy to date a girl who travels.

So here’s the big news: we got engaged.

I won’t go into too many details about how he asked because while my Instagram and blog might suggest I believe otherwise, I really don’t think everything needs to be shared on the internet.

The proposal

We’d been talking about it for a while and everyone including myself thought he’d pop the question when we go on holiday at the end of the year, but he said that he just decided there was no point in waiting. So he did it, rather unpredictably, on a Tuesday night, the day after we got back from Greece. It wasn’t anything like I’d imagined but it was absolutely perfect. It was at home, I was completely confused and then absolutely beside myself, and I couldn’t have asked for it to have gone any differently. I said yes, in between rather unattractive sobs.

Once we’d finished staring at each other and the champagne had been popped, and after the family phone calls, I  then proceeded to take 5000 photos of my ring in different lighting using various hand poses, until my hand no longer looked like a hand to me, but a strange, alien object. Our friends and family were over the moon for us, and I went from, “Oh I can’t begin to think about a wedding yet!” to trawling Pinterest for decor inspiration in about 12 hours.

Oh, and I’ve basically become unbearable. Sorry if you watch my Instagram Story and are sick of seeing my hand casually sneaked into every picture. But like, not sorry. I might only get engaged once.

Wedding planning

We’ve always known we’d get married abroad. It just makes sense, what with my love for travel and his love of holidays (we differ a bit in our travel tastes but it works). I’d never get married in England because my family are scattered around Isle of Man, Liverpool and Scotland, while all of his are here in the North East. How would we choose where to have the wedding?

Personally, I wouldn’t be comfortable spending a sizeable chunk of money on what is essentially a party in the UK. But I’m more than happy to spend it on a holiday with all of our close friends and family (let’s face it, only the ones who REALLY love us will fly out to the destination of our choosing), where one of the days will be devoted entirely to our wedding.

I didn’t think I wanted anything too fancy… and then I went on Pinterest. Wonder if my old man has some kind of secret wedding fund lying around, just waiting to be blown on ambient lighting and villa hire?

We both knew that I’d handle the wedding arrangements, with Tom giving a yay or nay when I ran ideas by him. As soon as I dipped my toe into the world of destination wedding planning, I was completely overwhelmed by how stressful it all seems. There isn’t that much information available online, each destination has it’s own laws and intricacies, and I’m still not really sure WHERE I want to tie the knot. We (I need to stop using the first person, it’s not just MY wedding – except it is really, isn’t it?) have narrowed it down more or less to three countries, so now it’s a matter of finding a venue.

Because I’ve realised how complicated planning a wedding can be, I figured I’d start a little Destination Wedding section here on While I’m Young. It would be lovely to be able to help other brides who want to do it abroad, but I’m already a little wary about how much unsolicited advice I’m bound to receive if I do this online. At the end of the day, we’ll do it our way.

I’ve also been approached by a few wedding planners and companies who’d like to be a part of the process in exchange for promotion, but call me old fashioned: I don’t want to pimp out my wedding. I don’t want to cheapen it with hashtag AD or have work to think about as I’m walking down the aisle. I’ll share the planning process here, but it will all be 100% authentic and I won’t be working with any brands on this particular adventure. This one’s just me and him (and my mum, who I’m 100% going to call even more than usual complaining/asking for advice/freaking out about basically planning a rather large family holiday).

So that’s where I’m at right now troops. Engaged, happy and excited to plan what’s bound to be one of the most memorable trips of my (our, OUR!) life. I never even wanted to get married until I met Tom, and I think that his ability to change my mind without ever trying is a pretty good sign that we’re doing the right thing.

Did you have a destination wedding? I’d love to hear about where you went, how it was and what advice you’d pass on. Please leave me a comment xx