In Mrs. Johnson’s fourth grade math class, my fellow students dreamed of big wedding dresses with extended trains, just like the one Selena Gomez wore last fall. At recess in Sherman, Texas, I heard them talk about big, fancy wedding parties.
In my barrettes and ponytails, I rehearsed for a different future. I’d peer out the windows of my classroom — through pink glasses — daydreaming that my husband and child were waiting in the hallway for me to get off work. While my math teacher had us learning about perpendicular shapes, my mind filled with visions of a mature love, beyond the gaudy glitz and glam of an ostentatious wedding.
Now that I’m planning my own wedding, it turns out I may have been ahead of my time. Call it a recession indicator, but predictions for wedding trends in 2026 have shown a shift in favor of grounded, understated celebrations of love. Though The Knot found in its 2026 Future of Marriage Report that social media trends and celebrity weddings are still major influences on engaged couples, 40% said viral moments created for social media were out for 2026. Martha Stewart Weddings said that couples are forgoing the “perfect day,” and opting instead for a meaningful one.
Vogue went further, calling intentionality the defining theme for the year.
Without even meaning to be, I’m following the new it trend. That is, I’m doing everything “wrong.” I’m not performing love for TikTok. I’m not building a wedding around what will photograph best for social media content. I’m also Gen X, not Gen Z — the generation that is getting closer to peak marrying age and responsible for driving these changes in planning. But I deeply relate to this desire, even when it made me feel like an outlier as a kid.
The instinct to find the kind of devoted love I fantasized about in grade school stayed with me as I got older, but I took the scenic route. I often chose toxic love affairs that taught painful, but necessary, life lessons. I learned what I didn’t want before I learned what I deserved. And then, after the age of 40, when I had almost given up the idea of finding Mr. Right, I met the person who changed everything.
Before we get to the wedding planning, I should introduce you to my fiancé. Jay is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. He’s a chef-turned-insurance-adjuster who, like me, loves history and moves through the world with curiosity, empathy, and an appreciation for different types of people. Our meeting wasn’t some cinematic moment reaching for the same fruit in the produce aisle. It was a very modern-day meet-cute. I became friends with his sister, Farren, on X. She messaged me one night and said she thought Jay and I might have a lot in common.
She was right.
The First Date
After talking for a few weeks, we finally agreed to meet in person around Valentine’s Day 2023. He drove from Fort Worth to Dallas to pick me up for our dinner date at a trendy Mexican restaurant, Beto & Son, in Trinity Groves. Almost immediately, we seemed to know: Okay, this is it.
We’d been dating for about a year when I started imagining what an engagement with Jay would look like. I knew he was my better half even without a marriage license, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it.
I thought about it a lot.
Like in October 2023, when we flew to Vegas for his birthday for an Usher concert. After consuming some edibles, I saw Usher sauntering down the aisle serenading the crowd and thought, Is he secretly guiding the spotlight towards our exact section? Would this be the moment? How did he get Usher on board? How would I react? Is my hair ok? I didn’t really like my outfit enough for it to be immortalized on camera. But I’d make an exception for Usher. None of these, of course, happened in real life, but in my chemically enhanced state of optimism, I truly believed that it would.
Then, during the summer of 2024, I studied in London. One afternoon, while visiting the Royal Observatory. I thought, Now this would be a great spot to propose. I secretly tried to orchestrate a return trip with Jay so that he would see how stellar my idea was. I imagined the symbolism of it — straddling time zones, hemispheres, and history. But we never made it back. (I still think the Observatory is a great proposal spot. If anyone wants to snag my idea — you’re welcome.)
Eventually, I stopped looking around corners and holding my breath.
That’s probably why it unfolded the way that it did.
The Engagement
It was October 2025, and I was in Birmingham, Alabama, on a press trip for the Magic City Classic — the largest HBCU football game in the country. It was overwhelming in the best way possible. Joyful. Loud. Beautiful. More than 65,000 Black people were dressed to the nines, with music everywhere, food and drinks flowing at every corner, and an energy so thick you could feel it pulsating underneath your skin.
I usually don’t invite guests on work trips, but we were encouraged to bring partners. It worked out perfectly because it was also Jay’s birthday weekend. It was electric. However, it was not romantic.
That night, we had a sensational group dinner at Hot and Hot Fish Club, a chic, Michelin-recommended restaurant in the trendy Pepper Place district. At the end of dinner, I was ready for bed and a full night’s sleep. I was exhausted, I complained. My feet hurt from walking all day.
But Jay insisted we check out the small rooftop bar for a nightcap. That particular night it was crawling with guests all huddled together and laughing loudly, taking liquor shots and snapping pictures.
There, on this ordinary and chaotic rooftop, tucked away in a quiet corner, Jay dropped to one knee and proposed. No crowd, no spectacle. No one watching.
In hindsight, I don’t know how they missed him on one knee or me laughing uncontrollably from astonishment. But it was sweet, gentle, and unexpected. Exactly the way our love had developed.
Jay turned to me before leaving our engagement spot and suggested we take a picture. I nodded yes, still stunned and unable to speak coherently. So we took a single selfie to commemorate the moment. That was it.
I didn’t feel anxious until I returned back to Dallas and had to retell the story.
“How did he propose?” my friends and family excitedly asked. But each time I answered, I felt that my delivery was landing softer than the grand spectacle everyone expected.
At the same time, everyone in my circle was talking about the viral Black influencer couple who got engaged via drones near our downtown Dallas apartment. People couldn’t stop talking about the way the groom planned the show for his soon-to-be fiancé Erica McDowell, shut down the streets, and got permits to close the airspace. It was a spectacular sight.
I thought about mine: subtle, intimate, and simple. Still, I quietly wondered if public performance had become the rubric my proposal would be graded against.
The Ring
Before I could figure that out, talks of the ring style came up.
McDowell was given a square-cut diamond at least a couple carats in size.
This ring choice, although stunning, aligned with what Vogue recently noted about celebrity engagement ring trends, where larger stones have become more common, in part because they appear dramatic in photographs.
Mine was a cluster ring, which was going viral among bridal trends for all the wrong reasons.
For the record, there are various types of cluster rings. My ring is a starburst cluster.
I love my ring.
But others apparently disagree. Brooklyn-based TikTok creator Melissa Watkins posted a video in 2023 criticizing cluster rings, a style that includes multiple stones grouped together into one setting. Her video has more than 600k views, and helped popularize the idea that a cluster ring signals low value or lack of love from a partner.
TikTok videos using #ShutUpRing have accumulated tens of millions of views, with creators warning that cluster rings are “huge red flags” and that “If someone is giving you a cluster diamond, they don’t love you.” The cruelty felt unhinged — and completely devoid of economic and historical context.
As for economics, “if he wanted to, he would” is a perfectly fine sentiment, but when introduced to real world stories in 2026 — like the DoorDash driver in Chicago who’s picking up shifts after his regular weekday work schedule in order to afford an engagement ring for his girlfriend — it often becomes, “He’s trying really hard, but he’s not a professional athlete. Is that enough?”
Historically, diamond rings worn as a symbol of betrothal didn’t appear until Maximillian the 1st, Archduke of Austria, commissioned a diamond ring for his new bride, Mary of Burgundy. This gift symbolizing his love in 1477 has continued to influence weddings around the globe, even now. During both Georgian (1714-1837) and Victorian eras (1837-1901), advances in craftsmanship and later manufacturing made cluster rings more available first to upper class, and later to everyday commonfolk. By this measure, rings produced in either of these eras would signal old money if you were fortunate enough to keep them in your family.
“By the late nineteenth century, especially after the Industrial Revolution, they allowed people outside of royalty to wear something beautiful, meaningful, and symbolic of commitment. They weren’t lesser rings,” said antique dealer and jewelry historian Tanzy Ward on the Hue I Do podcast. Ward said the cluster ring hate is generally classist, and she insists it has historical connection to Black Victorian and Americana history.
For Black American families like mine, whose ancestors were enslaved across the South, marriage was never guaranteed to those deemed chattel property. When unions did occur, the objects used to unite them in matrimony ranged from expandable, temporary brass rings to modest and sometimes improvised ones — like how Tempie Herndon’s wedding ring was carved by her husband Exeter from a shiny red button.
Post-emancipation heirlooms and generational wealth were frequently disrupted. Cluster rings for them weren’t just decorative; they represented tangible expressions of their love, but also jewelry that mimicked the commitments once reserved for royalty.
Seen through that lens, what’s casually dismissed today as dated or a “red flag” can also be an archive that reminds us that history survives in the material objects people choose to cherish.
The Wedding
Then comes the wedding planning.
McDowell’s wedding will involve a civil ceremony this year, followed by a grand wedding in Italy in 2027, according to People magazine.
But us? We’re getting married on ancestral land in the Piney Woods of Crockett — property purchased by my great-great grandmother less than two decades after enslavement ended in Texas.
I want to honor and celebrate a Black woman purchasing more than 60 acres of land in the 1880s. I don’t take that extraordinary feat lightly. The land sits on a private red dirt road, unincorporated, and is for the most part rather ordinary. It’s where generations of my family were born and lived their entire lives. In fact, because the family home on our property is so tiny, we’re having our October wedding outdoors underneath century-old pine and pecan trees. Nothing about it looks “polished” by social media standards.
But it is sacred.
Every time I visit, I feel my ancestors, living and departed. It felt like the only place that made sense to host a wedding, and it will be blessed forever afterward with the moment and the memories of the celebration. I didn’t want my wedding to impress anyone but my ancestors, myself, and my love. I wanted it to be authentic. And to me, that’s beautiful.
As this hallmark holiday month kicks off, maybe I’m putting some of this viral pressure on myself to compare my love story with the internet. Maybe I’m not. I don’t know.
What I do know is this: I’m getting married in 2026 as a Black Texan, on land my ancestors fought to keep, in a way that refuses spectacle at every turn. To a “real” bride — like me — I’m celebrating with sumptuous foods and lively libations designed by my good friend, a personal chef, which incorporates elements of Jay and my Texas roots, with subtle nods to our shared cultural heritage as Black Americans.
No known photos exist, but I’m also taking cues from my paternal roots in South Carolina by using archive newspaper articles to glean what small details were important to them. We’re looking forward to seeing the faces of immediate family and close friends as we say our vows.
So I’m choosing intentionality over those external pressures. We’re living in a world that appears to be collapsing into rubble — under the weight of impending war and an imploding political structure that my ancestors fought so hard against.
Choosing love now, in an age of uncertainty, feels incredibly scary, but also radically romantic. But it’s that sentimental quality that I’ve been rehearsing since the fourth grade.
By the social world’s standards, I’m older than the traditional first-time bride, which could explain why my approach to planning feels different than representations in magazines and online.
I might be doing everything wrong. But I know the 9-year-old Deah who daydreamed about her pretend husband in Mrs. Johnson’s fourth grade class would be proud to see this love story unfold.
