I'll admit it: my fiancé and I have probably been a bit overly ambitious lately.

We bought a house in the middle of planning a wedding, while - at the time at least - dealing with some now-resolved difficulties with my visa to stay in the country. So, the days have been jam-packed with stress for the last few months and with our wedding date exactly eight months away today (oh god, how is time going so fast?!)...well, the stress is showing no signs of slowing down. By the time the wedding's happened, it will basically have been almost three years of a constant, niggling stress. Which is why, after the wedding, we are planning for like....at least double that amount of time in a relatively stress-free bubble. It's going to be time to actually enjoy everything; newlywed bliss and all that. And it was around the time that we'd planning for a stress-free bubble that I had started to notice people began asking us a different kind of wedding related question: "So, how long after the wedding until you guys take the next step?"  Naively, my response the first time I was asked was that we were planning on adopting a dog this year - because I'd been very vocal about the fact that I wanted a dog. But, no. That's not what they meant. They meant the pitter-patter of two feet, rather than a four-legged friend. And that surely, the second bedroom in the house meant we were going to be turning it into a nursery soon. And, after all, the clock was ticking - didn't I want to be a mum? The questions kept coming and coming, with some people even weighing in on an exact timeframe I *should* want (apparently, it's right after the wedding). Never mind, you know, what my fiancé and I had actually talked about - or the years of difference between the two. And, of course, when I tried to point this out I got told I would change my mind soon after the wedding. Since when did the fact that someone is planning a wedding make it open season for baby talk/planning? And why were people trying to be so involved the 'when' of it all (or telling me that I was wrong)? Even more, since when is 'we're not ready' an answer that can be dismissed? It's all become a bit unsettling. While I'm sure some of it is said jokingly (or I hope so, at least), most of it has been said in that 'ha-ha-I-want-to-sound-like-I'm-joking-but-I'm-not' kind of tone - which has led to me making some changes while wedding planning. Namely, that more and more of the plans for the big day are being kept quiet. After all, if there's no wedding talk then there can't be any baby talk to follow...right? We're planning for a long honeymoon period - and while I know there's nothing wrong with that, it's getting exhausting having to defend it.

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