If you know me beyond the wacky world of the world wide web, you may know that I've been slightly obsessed with wedding blogs and most-things-wedding for the past few months. There's a phenomenon on these websites that I find to be rather trouble. It's the idea of "waiting". People are either married, engaged, or waiting. Not dating, waiting.

There are girls who obsess and scheme and try to figure out how to best convince their boyfriend to propose. They have all already discussed marriage and in many cases are making wedding plans but they don't consider themselves to be engaged because they don't have a ring. And if they don't have a ring and they're not making plans they seem to think that all of life's happiness hinges on a proposal.

I realize that Paul and I got engaged rather early in our relationship, but if we had not gotten engaged then and still weren't engaged, I wouldn't consider myself to be waiting to get engaged. I would consider myself to be in a dating relationship. I would not cheapen my relationship by saying, "well it doesn't matter because I'm not engaged!" I don't like to wait. I like to be proactive when I want something. If these girls are so obsessed with getting married why don't they buy their boyfriend a $3000 and propose to him? Oh, what's that? That's a lot of money? I bet their boyfriends (and their bank accounts) agree!