[El Bastardo]

The following is a post from an anonymous Revscene member. If the original anonymous member would like to respond to this thread, please feel free to PM me

I've been going out with my girlfriend for almost 4.5 years now. We started dating in high school and we were both our first serious relationship. We're currently both 21, she is finishing university this year and I've been working in my career field for about 2 years.

I really love her and I see my self being with her for the rest of my life. She's everything you could ever ask for in a gf or a wife. I know it sounds very cliche but she truly does complete me. We compliment each other very well. She loves me as well and she wants to spend her entire life with me too. We have been talking about marriage a lot lately and I've been getting ready to propose and ask her parent's for their blessing and permission to marry their daughter.

Money isn't that much of an issue but since we've started talking about marriage I've been trying to save my money a lot more now. Kind of living more "frugal". Ideally I would've liked to get married at around 26-27 but marrying now will allow us to do the things that we couldn't do before. We are also not just getting married because of that. Getting married at 26-27 means that we would've been able to spend 5-6 years saving up our money instead of just a year or so and that way we wouldn't have to rent and instead put a down payment towards a house.

It seems like there is a lot to pay for when getting married:
1) Wedding
2) honey moon
3) place to live

Roughly how much would everything cost? We've estimated about like 20k but we really want to get it down as much as possible. We've got quite a bit of family and friends in Vancouver and it'd be hard for us not to invite them. We would also be the first ones getting married out of our circle of friends.

Also, where would you guys recommend looking at getting a ring? I've heard it should be 3 months pay but there is no way I would spend that much money on a ring. I want it to be nice but not too expensive. I think my budget would be like $1-3k (does that even get a nice ring?) but I can go higher but would prefer not to. What should I look for as well?

And for those of you who proposed and asked for their parents permission, how did it go? Did you take them out to dinner or just casually ask them together.

Thanks guys!