To be engaged is not a legal nor a religious contract: engagement is a tradition announcing that a young couple intend to get married. Usually it marks the moment when the two lovers start living together, breaking free from their families who trust their feelings and intentions. It can also be seen as a test period: living together with a promise of a wedding ring for each of them. This promise is traditionally sealed with the engagement ring.



Some prefer to get married without being engaged, but it is important to note that the engagement celebration is an excellent occasion for the families to gather. It gives the couple an opportunity to let their relatives and friends know about their soon coming wedding, if the date is already set.

Getting engaged is a serious decision, holding meaningful questions and answers. Partners have to be sure that they wish to spend the rest of their lifetime together, and that their engagement is not the outcome of pressure directed at the couple by the families or their siblings. The couple must be sincere as regards their feelings and faithful as regards their dedication to each other: are they really in love, and up to assist each other in hard times?

Being engaged is not a valid union so to speak, although the symbol it carries has to be respected and honoured by truthful hearts only. Before deciding upon the date of the engagement celebration, the couple have to speak about their future, and their mutual motivations. Why make it official? Why now and with who?

In the past, young men used to ask their beloved's hand to their future father in law: unfortunately the answer wasn't always positive, but if it was, a date was fixed and the preparations began. Nowadays, men and women alike make their proposal in many different ways. Indeed, women are no longer silent about their feelings, and the fact that they usually think further in time than men, as regards their relationships, results in many a proposal being made to more hesitating men who are not all willing to make their union official. Men claiming their independence will not feel trapped and yet they will have made their first step towards the city hall or church.

There are thousands of ways to make one's proposal : a romantic desire whispered in the ear, a dinner in a lavish restaurant with a formal proposal and a ring, a walk to the place of the lovers' first encounter, an unexpected trip... It belongs to the couple to find a personal and authentic way of doing it, planning it: indeed, it can be done only once, so it has to be memorable and successful.

The beauty of the engagement symbol lies indeed in the fact that it is not required for legal reasons: if a wedding implies a new civil and familial status, an engagement is much more like a love declaration.