Announcing your engagement: who to tell, and in what order

Announcing an engagement sounds like the easiest job of the whole period, and for most people it is. Where it goes wrong, it goes wrong in the same way every time: somebody who should have heard it from you learns it third-hand, or from a screen.

That is not a question of etiquette but of rank. When somebody hears a piece of news tells them how important you consider them, and people run that calculation unconsciously and with great accuracy. Two days of thought before you announce anything saves months of quiet resentment.

It helps to treat the announcement not as one event but as three, with real gaps between them.

Leave at least a few days between the first circle and the third. Not out of formality, but because news travels faster than anyone expects: once twenty people know, you no longer know who does not.

The commonest mistake is skipping the second circle entirely. You tell your parents, you enjoy it, and everyone else picks it up in passing — with the result that your oldest friend hears it from a cousin's colleague. A list of fifteen names and one afternoon of phone calls removes the problem completely.

For most people the day they hear it is irrelevant. For five groups it is not, and they are easy to overlook.

Your own children. They hear it before any adult, and individually — not in a cheerful gathering where they are required to be delighted. To a child an engagement is not news but an announcement of change, and they need room for a first, unedited reaction.

Separated parents. Whoever is told first is read as the more important one. The only way around it is to tell both on the same day and say so: I am ringing your father this afternoon too. That strips the order of its meaning.

Anyone having a hard year. Someone recently bereaved, recently separated, or quietly struggling to have a child will still be pleased for you — but they need the news one to one, not in a group where they have to perform it.

A former partner, where there are children. Not out of deference but practicality: they will find out regardless, and it is easier for everyone if they hear it from you rather than from the child.

Work. Not because an engagement belongs there, but because it eventually means leave, cover and possibly an invitation. Mentioning it in passing is more comfortable than presenting it later as a rota problem — and in a small team it should happen before anything goes online.

Whether a picture of the ring is compulsory is a matter of taste. The timing is not. A post announces it to everybody simultaneously, and it ends any possibility of telling somebody personally.

The practical rule follows: do not post until the first and second circles know. For most couples that is one to two weeks. Anyone who finds that too long is usually afraid somebody else will tell it first, and there is a sentence for that at the moment of telling: we have not made it public yet, please give us until the weekend. Almost everyone honours it when asked.

Settle between yourselves what goes online at all. Some people share their lives readily and others not at all, and an engagement belongs to two of them. A post that one of you is merely tolerating is a poor start to a whole series of similar questions — photographs from the day, guests' names, possibly children later on.

One more thing that gets overlooked: anyone whose work involves clients, patients or pupils is well advised to think for a moment about who else sees the post. Not because there is anything wrong with it, but because deciding beforehand is more comfortable than explaining afterwards.

Every announcement is followed within seconds by two questions: when, and where. You owe no answer to either, and it is usually wiser not to give one.

The reason is the same as for the first weeks generally: anything that goes into circulation now comes back later as an expectation. A season mentioned in passing becomes an arrangement; a size mentioned in passing tells somebody whether they are included. We do not know yet, we will let you know is a complete answer and is accepted without the slightest offence.

Nor do you have to recount the proposal if you would rather not. You will reliably be asked, usually out of genuine delight, and it still belongs to you. One sentence is enough, and anyone who wants more can have it next time. If you do enjoy telling it, agree on one version between you — nothing gives a couple away like two accounts of the same evening.

What does help is signalling what comes next: that you will be in touch once there is a date. That answers the question before it is asked for the third time, and spares you giving the same non-answer fifteen times over.

It happens more often than it is discussed: somebody is not as pleased as you had pictured. A parent is reserved, a friend immediately asks practical questions, a sibling changes the subject rather quickly.

In the vast majority of cases this has very little to do with you. Engagements touch other people's own accounts — their own marriage, their own separation, their own solitude, their own worries about money. The first reaction is often not the real one; the real one arrives two days later as a phone call.

If it does not, asking directly beats interpreting. I had the feeling the news landed heavily with you — is that right? almost always gets an honest answer, and it stops one second of silence turning into a year of distance.

For the practical side, the same applies as to everything else in this period: write down who already knows. It sounds excessive and is not — after thirty conversations nobody can remember who they rang. That list eventually migrates anyway, towards guests and addresses of the kind that end up on a wedding website of your own.