The wedding – Part I – „When are you going to settle down?”

The life of a single girl in Romania, even in the city area, can become complicated once the girl reaches 25 years of age – not to mention 30 or more. You know what I mean: the single obsessing annoying question „when are you going to get married?”. Well, what´s a girl supposed to answer, if she´s not a clear-sighted witch, or if Prince Charming had not yet shown up? And even if he´s there and he had not popped up the question yet?

So looking back, I got this question myself once too many. And the tone, oh my God – from plain curiosity, to condescendence and even to bitter remarks like – you career women, if you wait too long, nobody´s going to want to have you anymore.

Actually, this was only one of the often asked questions that I got during that time. Others revolved around the well-known proprietary needs of my Romanian fellows – when am I going to buy my own flat, or at least a piece of land to build a house? And I was wondering the whole time, what to do with all the inexistent cash in my bank account. Or, why am I not eating any meat? I started thinking that, besides these little details that I needed to fix in my life, I was actually quite ok, if not even perfect.

Finally Prince Charming appeared – a handsome German with blue eyes, who stole my heart at the first sight during a business event in Paris. Then the spirits around my Romanian network quieted down a bit, and version 2.0 of the question started to raise: „when are you going to marry HIM?”.

When the young couple took the decision to move together, before talks of a marriage were done, there must have been some traditionalists which were quite scandalized. My family showed understanding though and they were also happy when they heard about the romantic proposal which was done, some time after, at the beautiful Plitvice Lakes in Croatia where we were on holiday.

I must say I was already very touchy when marriage discussions were approaching – for example I told my mother-in-law that I am patiently waiting for the romantic proposal and will not discuss the topic until then.

Well the good thing is, experience taught me never to ask delicate questions to other people – such as about getting married or having kids or other standard themes on having a traditional life style. So if I ever asked you such a question, cross my heart that it was only fun or slightly ironical and I would never bother you with such stuff.