The day of love just got a little sweeter with your engagement. If you got engaged on Valentine’s Day, congratulations! You might feel like you’re floating, a little overwhelmed, deeply in love, or all of the above at once. Welcome to engagement season.
The first few weeks after getting engaged can feel like an emotional rollercoaster. Your brain is processing a major life event while your phone is blowing up, your parents are brimming with ideas, and people are already asking about wedding details you didn’t even know were things to think about.
This article will help you slow down and re-center. We’ll walk you through what’s happening emotionally, how to stay connected as a couple, key logistical considerations like money and legal planning (yes, prenups included), and how to ease into wedding planning without letting stress take over what should be a beautiful chapter.
First, enjoy the moment
Valentine’s Day, on its own, comes with a basket of societal expectations, so toss in an engagement, and it can feel like a lot of “shoulds” converging. It can also be easy for others’ excitement and love for you to come in the form of questions and advice, which can create a sense of urgency.
But first things first—take time to enjoy, process, and savor this milestone together. Spend the next 24 to 48 hours just being a couple. Go for a walk, make dinner, and discuss how everything unfolded. Let yourselves soak in the moment before the planning and logistics begin.
Why does this matter? Engagement isn’t just a logistical step—it’s also a psychological one. You’re shifting from “partner” to “fiancé(e),” and research shows that big life transitions can heighten emotional intensity until your new identity feels stable. Taking time to slow down, enjoy, and process this change helps balance those heightened emotions of joy and stress. It’s a way to anchor yourselves before all the outside noise kicks in.
Share the news with intention
There’s no rule for when or how you should announce your engagement. What’s helpful to remember, though, is how activating other people’s reactions can be—even if you don’t expect them to affect you. Your news may bring excitement, but it can also stir up opinions, projections, or subtle pressure. Parents might jump straight into planning or feel a mix of pride and bittersweet emotion. Friends might project their own anxieties or compare your engagement to theirs. And sometimes, even well-meaning excitement can spark a little anxiety before you’ve had a chance to catch your breath.
A few therapist-approved tips:
- Tell close loved ones personally before posting publicly—this reduces the “I found out from Instagram” fallout.
- Pace communication to prevent burnout. You don’t need to respond to every text in real time, or tell everyone in your life at one time or in person.
- Practice a shared line that can help slow things down or when your own emotions arise, like: “We’re soaking it all in right now, but we’ll loop you in when we start planning!”
This communicates boundaries without sounding defensive.
Have your first “engaged couple” conversation
What should your first conversation as an engaged couple be? Not the prenup conversation. Not the wedding budget conversation. Not the “who’s invited?” conversation. There’s more than enough time for those. Your first steps should be at a 10,000-foot view. Talk to each other about what you want from this engagement period—what you need, what you don’t like, and what you might already be worried about.
These early conversations set the emotional tone and provide you both with an anchor as you navigate engagement and wedding planning. And remember, it’s entirely normal for partners to step into planning at different speeds.
Talk about wedding planning at a calm, grounded pace
At some point, yes, your next step after a Valentine’s Day engagement is to open the wedding planning conversation. In general, the wedding industry thrives on urgency; book quickly, pay deposits, act now or risk losing it. This pressure can make couples feel unprepared or behind before they’ve even begun.
Instead of jumping into the details, start with three simple questions:
- What size wedding do we envision? (Tiny? Medium? Big? Something in between?)
- Where do we want it? (Local? Destination? Somewhere meaningful?)
- What is our general financial comfort zone? (Not numbers yet—just a sense of scale.)
People often skip these and head straight to fun venue tours. But finding alignment on these three questions anchors your decisions and makes everything that follows smoother.
Have the money conversation early rather than later
Money is one of the biggest sources of tension during engagement and in marriage, often not because couples can’t agree on a budget, but because they’re not having the whole conversation or not having it early enough.
Instead of jumping straight into line items like “we can spend X on the venue,” start with a more expansive conversation. Talk about your values and how they shape the wedding you want. Do you imagine a big guest list because family matters deeply to you? How do each of you approach money, handle disagreements, or make decisions together?
This is essentially emotional budgeting before the literal budgeting. Research indicates that couples who understand each other’s financial psychology tend to experience higher long-term relationship satisfaction and lower conflict. This is also why early engagement is a natural time to consider financial clarity tools like prenups and postnups. They’re not a threat to romance but a structure for teamwork. Talking about money during wedding planning is less about planning a party and more about practicing for your future life.
Start the prenup conversation before the stress hits
Prenuptial agreements can feel intimidating, especially because pop culture frames them as a “when we break up” document. In reality, modern prenups function more like relationship agreements. They create clarity, protection, fairness, and shared expectations for the marriage itself, not just for hypothetical future outcomes.
Valentine’s Day engagements often come with a love bubble. While you may hesitate to bring up something “serious,” this is actually the ideal moment to start the prenup conversation. You’re emotionally aligned, future-focused, and still early enough in the planning process to approach it calmly.
When couples wait until the final months before the wedding, prenup conversations often get tangled in exhaustion, stress, and decision fatigue. Starting early allows for thoughtful, grounded conversations rather than hurried ones.
Don’t skip premarital counseling (even if things are great)
Therapists, relationship researchers, and long-term couples all say the same thing: premarital counseling works.
It’s not crisis counseling. It’s proactive coaching on communication, conflict, money, intimacy, values, and long-term stability. Studies even show that couples who do structured premarital programs report higher marital satisfaction and lower divorce rates.
Most importantly, it gives you a space that’s just for the two of you, away from opinions and noise. You get to practice being a team. So, at the end of the day, premarital counseling isn’t a sign that something is wrong. It’s a sign you’re investing in your future.
Protect your relationship from external noise
Everyone has opinions about weddings, and they love sharing them. Sometimes that support feels great, and sometimes it’s accidentally stressful. After your engagement, it’s helpful to establish a few healthy boundaries. Create a shared script for when people push, delay big decisions until you two have talked first, and check in weekly to make sure you’re still making choices as a team rather than reacting to outside pressure. Remember, this engagement is yours, not the public’s. In many ways, this chapter becomes the first real stress test of your shared boundary-setting skills, and it’s solid practice for marriage.
Don’t forget to enjoy this season
Engagement can pass in a flash, and while planning matters, this period is just as much about preparing for your marriage as it is about preparing for the wedding. Go out for celebratory dinners, take photos that aren’t for Instagram, write each other letters, and talk about the future you’re excited to build together. These are the moments you’ll remember years from now.
Final thoughts: Next steps after a Valentine’s Day engagement
A Valentine’s Day engagement is incredibly special, but it can also throw you into a whirlwind of feelings, questions, and opinions. The real work now isn’t rushing into planning; it’s grounding yourselves as a couple. When you slow down, enjoy the moment, and talk openly about what you want this season to feel like, you’re already building the skills that matter in marriage: communication, teamwork, boundaries, and clarity around money and future plans.
Start the logistics at a calm pace, have the bigger conversations early (prenups included), and keep checking in with each other before letting outside voices steer the ship. Most of all, enjoy this chapter. Celebrate, soak it in, and hold onto the moments that feel meaningful. This season is the start of your life together.
Dr. Vivian Oberling is a licensed clinical psychologist with degrees from UCLA, Harvard, and Stanford. In her private telehealth practice, she works with adults navigating anxiety, identity shifts, and relationship dynamics—whether they’re dating, partnered, or parenting. She also provides executive coaching and behavioral health advisory support to tech startups and legal tools reshaping how we think about love, marriage, and psychological safety. Dr. Oberling combines 10+ years of clinical expertise with modern, real-world insight to help people move through uncertainty with clarity and connection.
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