Brides and joy
On your knees.. a man proposes and a woman agrees at sunrise, on Sydney's Sandram Point on Valentine's Day. Photo: Damian McDermott
The rules of engagement demand a romantic proposal.
As celebrities, model Miranda Kerr and actor Orlando Bloom are used to being fashionable. So it should come as no surprise that their love life is also right on trend. Not only have they casually bypassed the traditional relationship chronology - with Kerr pregnant before their engagement - the engagement itself was no surprise.
Kerrbloom may have announced their betrothal just a month before their July wedding, but according to a statement from Kerr, they "had been trying to plan [it] for some time".
Forty years ago, a relationship proceeded along a set trajectory of courtship, proposal on one knee after father's approval, engagement, marriage, honeymoon, moving in together and pattering feet. But today, the need to marry early has all but vanished.
Advertisement: Story continues below
"You can be the architects of your own relationship," says Anne Hollonds, CEO of Relationships Australia NSW.
Thanks in large part to feminism and the pill, we are free to have sex, live together, enjoy a dirty weekend, buy property and have kids - all without a gold band or marriage certificate.
"Men and women are forming long-term relationships that have many similarities to marriage, yet aren't quite," says Hannah Seligson, author of A Little Bit Married: How to Know When it's Time to Walk Down the Aisle or Out the Door.
"It's now the norm for couples to date for three, five, even 10 years."
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, women and men are now marrying at an average age of 28 and 30 respectively, with some 78 per cent of couples living together before they marry, while about 34 per cent of babies are born out of wedlock.
As couples pick and mix their way through the process of settling down, the rules of engagement have undergone a radical shift. While men once "popped the question" to their sweethearts, today "that surprise proposal where they've never discussed marriage before and suddenly there's a ring is very, very rare", says
Dr Amanda Miller, a sociologist at the University of Central Oklahoma.
These days, both partners negotiate the process of engagement well in advance of the actual event. You plan to get engaged just like you plan a wedding, a major purchase or an overseas holiday.
With couples so committed and comfortable, engagement talk is no longer restricted to dancing around a taboo or dropping hints. In fact, it often arrives after conception. A pregnant Gwyneth Paltrow married Chris Martin in 2003, and three months ago singer Alicia Keys married her producer Swizz Beatz while heavy with child.
Look at Prince William and Kate Middleton. They've been dating for the best part of a decade, with Kate having her own security detail and representing Wills at family functions. While they may not be officially bound for the altar, "they had those conversations long ago", reports the Daily Mail - "as far as they're concerned, they're engaged".
It's not just the royal family that has "those conversations". Education graduate Sarah, 27, married Chris, 27, a teacher, last month. Having moved in together after dating since high school, they found it easy to discuss their engagement before they got engaged.
"We'd always been talking about it," says Sarah.
Our increasingly complex lives almost make pre-engagement planning a necessity. With both partners likely to have busy careers, Seligson notes that discussions around engagement have a lot to do with working out when couples actually have the capacity to get engaged.
Julia, 24, a publicist, has been with her partner, Brett, 24, a designer, for four years. There is no secret about the fact that marriage is their ultimate aim.
"We've been talking about getting married for a while and want to do it in the next two years," she says. However, this has to fit in with their plans to buy a house. "I think practicality wins out," she says. "We're both still young, both still saving money ... we kind of do need to talk about it."
Generation Y women, in particular, have learnt not to make assumptions about where a relationship is going. Having watched women in past generations miss out on children due to miscommunication with their partners, they know it's important to be clear about expectations and plans once a relationship gets serious. With such a finite window of fertility, "You need to raise the issue," cautions Hollonds.
On top of this, the bling makes it near impossible to keep engagements a secret. According to Bride to Be's 2008 Cost of Love survey, some 50 per cent of grooms now select the engagement ring with the help of their future fiancée.
Hollonds notes that increased equality in today's relationships means that "both partners want to be involved in just about everything [they do]". And with a ring now costing an average of $5000, you don't want to get it wrong, either. Sarah and Chris chose her engagement ring together, both as "a massive investment and an important symbolic element of being engaged".
In her research on cohabiting couples before marriage, Amanda Miller found that some even discuss how a proposal will happen. For Sarah, this simply meant expressing a preference for a private proposal, while Julia has asked Brett for a surprise when the right time comes. But for other women, this can extend to more specific instructions.
"There are a few women who in some ways are scripting their proposals, saying things like, 'I've always wanted to be proposed to in front of my family,'" says Miller.
Yet while the decision to get engaged may have become less spontaneous, the fanfare around it has blossomed. With couples already so committed before engagement, there is a real need to differentiate your new level of commitment.
"It's about letting your friends and family know, making a bit more of a public statement," says Sarah Gawthorne, editor of Bride to Be. According to Let's Get Engaged! magazine, beaches, fireworks, holidays and skywriting are some of the most popular ways to propose. Some 70 per cent of Australian couples have engagement parties, while it's no secret weddings are more expensive than they've ever been.
Odd or sensible?
While it may seem odd for women - who are independent in so many other respects - to want a special proposal, old habits die hard. "Since we were little girls, we're taught about this fairytale wedding," says Miller. "Everyone wants to tell the story of how their boyfriend rented the hot-air balloon and proposed."
The convention of the man proposing also remains important. For the women - often the main initiators in a relationship - this is a sure sign of the men's "love and commitment", says clinical psychologist Jo Lamble. For the men, it's part of living up to the masculine ideal.
"I think they're fearful of not being manly enough; they don't want their family and friends hearing that their fiancée asked them to marry them."
Along with a diet of pop culture engagements, from Sleeping Beauty to The Wedding Singer - "Rom coms have got a lot to answer for," says Lamble - couples today have also grown up with an idealised version of the old-school proposals of the 1940s and '50s. Anxious to avoid the divorce problems of their parents' era, they see overt displays of romanticism as a way of bolstering a relationship's chances.
"Some couples still like to hook back to those traditional methods," says Hollonds. "There's a little bit of nostalgia for doing it the way their grandparents did."
Even for couples who don't want to create a huge moment, the hoopla around engagements can be hard to avoid. Six weeks after they chose the ring, Chris proposed to Sarah one evening at home. Even though they did it exactly the way they wanted - privately, without a big fuss - they still felt pressure from friends who wanted to know, "What's the story, what's the story?" says Sarah. "It's intense. I did have to squash those girlie feelings."
With so much pressure around today's betrothals, Lamble is sceptical about the new rules of engagement. While she is greatly encouraged by couples' ability to talk to each other, the pressure is worrying. Her advice is to ditch the proposal altogether and go straight to engagement.
"I don't think you can have open discussions about a joint decision and then wait for this magic proposal;
that's where the problem lies."
Yet while a proposal boycott may save couples from added pressure, it's hard to see it catching on anytime soon. As Gawthorne explains, "There are a lot of romantics still out there."
Courtesy of Sunday Life
Judith Ireland, Sunday Life
