Congratulations, you’re engaged! Whether on bended knee with big shiny rock or a meaningful conversation on your couch, you and your partner have decided to get married and spend your lives together. Yay! But before you start planning your wedding and choosing napkin colours, you’ll need to decide how to announce your engagement. (Hint: It’s not with a post on social media right away!)
Keep reading for our best tips on how to announce your engagement, who to share the news with first, and creative ways to let your friends and family in on your good news. Once again, a big congrats from all of us here at Young Hip & Married!
What is an announcement of engagement?
An announcement of engagement, while formal sounding, is really just letting people know that you are engaged. This doesn’t have to be a formal announcement in a newspaper or sent via mail. It can be as simple as calling someone up and sharing your happy news!
Of course, there are other ways to announce your engagement, so keep reading for more on the do’s and don’ts of engagement announcements!
When should you announce your engagement?
There is no strict timeline for when you need to announce your engagement. You and your partner may want to keep the news to yourselves for a little while before sharing with the world. That being said, if your proposal happens in a public place, in front of friends and family, or is filmed and posted on social media, the cat will likely be out of the bag right away.
You’ll probably want to share that you’re engaged fairly soon after the proposal. Assuming you get engaged in private, many couples will begin sharing the news within a few days. Make sure you have a plan for who you want to tell, how and when (more on that below) and keep in mind that once you start sharing, word will get out, so you’ll want to keep telling people.
Lastly, make sure your engagement announcement doesn’t step on anyone’s toes or steal their thunder. For example, it would be a bad idea to announce your engagement at someone else’s wedding or engagement party.
What happens after an engagement announcement?
Hopefully, a lot of hugs and congratulations! Once you announce your engagement, you should expect to be celebrated by your friends and family who are hearing the happy news. Expect hugs, handshakes or a toast in your honour!
You can also expect questions about the wedding. It’s not unusual for a couple to get engaged and moments later be asked, “So, when’s the wedding? Am I invited? What are your wedding colours?” You might think it’s a bit soon to be discussing the wedding…and you’d be right! Shut down this line of questioning by saying something like, “We’re just excited to celebrate our engagement right now and haven’t started wedding planning yet.”
Even if you have started wedding planning before your engagement announcement, hold off on talking about wedding plans with friends and family. It’s easy to get swept up in conversations and start making promises about your wedding that you can’t keep. Wait until you and your partner have had time to finalize your plans before offering to put someone in your wedding party or giving them a plus one.
Another thing you might want to do after your engagement announcement is have an engagement party. An engagement party is optional, but can be a fun way to celebrate this milestone in your relationship. Click here for more things to do after you get engaged!
All right, now that you now all about engagement announcements, let’s break down the four steps of actually announcing your engagement:
Step 1) Be on the same page for the announcement of your engagement
Before you start sharing the happy news of your engagement or posting ring selfies on social media, you’ll want to talk to your partner. The two of you should be on the same page about who you want to tell, how you want to tell them and when. In fact, you may even want to talk about this before you get engaged so one of you doesn’t accidentally text their mom with the news while the other is still wiping tears away from the heartfelt proposal.
You also have the option to keep your engagement news to yourselves for a little while. Especially if you get engaged in private, such as at home or while away on vacation, it can be kind of nice to have a secret only the two of you know about. You can spend time celebrating and talking about your wedding without any outside opinions or interruptions.
Step 2) Announcing your engagement to your closest loved ones
Once you’re ready to announce your engagement, start with your closest friends and family members. These are the people you would naturally want to tell first and who will be so excited to share in your good news.
As much as possible, try to announce your engagement to your closest people in person. Not only is this so much more meaningful than a text or email, but it also makes the celebration so much better. Wouldn’t you rather hug and pop champagne with your loved ones than have them send you a champagne emoji?
If you can’t tell them in person, try to tell them live. You can do this with a video or phone call so you can still see each other’s reactions and share in a joyful moment together.
Step 3) Engagement announcement ideas for the rest of your friends and family
Once your closest circle of loved ones have heard the happy news, it’s time to announce your engagement to more of your friends and family. This may be people who you don’t talk to all the time but you do see regularly and who would be excited to hear your news from you. Here are a few engagement announcement ideas for the rest of your friends and family:
- Phone and video calls
- An email thread
- Sharing at a family get together
- Announcing over happy hour drinks
- Old fashioned snail mail with a cute ring selfie
The idea with this stage of your engagement announcement is that you want to reach out to people personally and share your happy news, rather than wait for them to see it online. While it can be fun to wait until you see everyone in person to announce your engagement, sometimes an email or call is more practically so you’re not waiting months to share the news.
Step 4) An engagement announcement on social media
The last place you want to announce your engagement is on social media. Before you post, make sure everyone who would want to hear your news personally has already heard it. You don’t want grandma finding out about your engagement through Facebook!
Remember that there’s no timeline when it comes to social media. You can spend weeks sharing your news with friends and family, enjoying the fun moments of telling people in person or on the phone, before you open a single app. And please, don’t stress about coming up with a clever caption your post – people will be excited for you no matter what. (Though here’s a little caption inspiration, if you need it!)
Once it’s posted, your engagement announcement will officially be out there in the world for everyone from your boss to your old kindergarten teacher to see. Enjoy all the comments that come in, knowing that all of your important people have already shared in your happy news.
Congratulations on your engagement! Once you’ve announced your engagement to friends, family and social media, you’ll want to dive into the world of wedding planning. While it can be overwhelming, we know one way to ensure a stress-free experience (seriously, just ask our past couples!): hiring Young Hip & Married to officiate. Check out our ceremony packages here!
Riana Ang-Canning has been working with Young Hip & Married since 2017. She is a professional content writer with experience in travel, lifestyle and weddings. Riana not only writes Young Hip & Married blog posts but is also involved with the company's internal communications, social media, copywriting and more. She knows YHM, and the wedding world, inside and out!
