Engagements, weddings, & babies | 2026

[elektra blue]

Apparently, the dream boy of many is now engaged...

My condolences to all the fans who were hoping to marry him

i'm not a jealous person

 

[4everchan]

i'm not a jealous person

Your avatar has never looked as accurate as today.

 

[elektra blue]

Your avatar has never looked as accurate as today.

a Rogue cat is not necessarily a liar

 

[4everchan]

a Rogue cat is not necessarily a liar

especially one carrying a knife

 

[elektra blue]

especially one carrying a knife

it's in plain sight!

 

[4everchan]

it's in plain sight!

and your point is ?

 

[skylark]

OT, but I’ll never understand these 2+ year engagements, unless the couple wants a very specific setting that is difficult to book. Six months is plenty.

When I went with my (then-prospective) daughter-in-law to shop for a wedding dress, it was either January or February 2024, and she was shopping for a July wedding. When she said so, the sales girl was shocked! "So soon?" LOL. Times have changed. But I was so pleased with how low-key, comparatively, my son and dil planned the wedding and carried through with their intention.

 

[Diana Delafield]

When I went with my (then-prospective) daughter-in-law to shop for a wedding dress, it was either January or February 2024, and she was shopping for a July wedding. When she said so, the sales girl was shocked! "So soon?" LOL. Times have changed. But I was so pleased with how low-key, comparatively, my son and dil planned the wedding and carried through with their intention.

Good for them. My husband and I got engaged in February 1983 and married in September. We would have had the wedding sooner, but we were both in fourth-year university and had final exams coming up in April, whose results were vital for our provisional acceptance into grad school. So we just agreed to get married, I started wearing my engagement ring, and everything else got put on hold until after graduation ceremonies in May. Then my mother and I buckled down to a summer of planning and it wasn't all that frantic. As my mother told my prospective MIL, "She's had her wedding planned for years. She was just auditioning candidates for the role of bridegroom and finally found the right one for the part." Fortunately his mother had a terrific sense of humour and loved this.

 

[Mariott]

Anna Shcherbakova got engaged to her boyfriend Artem Shakirov (a former hockey player and businessman).

​

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

Good for them. My husband and I got engaged in February 1983 and married in September. We would have had the wedding sooner, but we were both in fourth-year university and had final exams coming up in April, whose results were vital for our provisional acceptance into grad school. So we just agreed to get married, I started wearing my engagement ring, and everything else got put on hold until after graduation ceremonies in May. Then my mother and I buckled down to a summer of planning and it wasn't all that frantic. As my mother told my prospective MIL, "She's had her wedding planned for years. She was just auditioning candidates for the role of bridegroom and finally found the right one for the part." Fortunately his mother had a terrific sense of humour and loved this.

Congratulations!
"The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own. "Very little white satimman, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business! Selina would stare when she heard of it." But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union."
(Final paragraph of Jane Austen's Emma.)
For a viewpoint beyond Mrs Elton's:
"Mrs. Bennet found, with amazement and horror, that her husband would not advance a guinea to buy clothes for his daughter. He protested that she should receive from him no mark of affection whatever on the occasion. Mrs. Bennet could hardly comprehend it. That his anger could be carried to such a point of inconceivable resentment as to refuse his daughter a privilege without which her marriage would scarcely seem valid" (from Pride and Prejudice)
The "inflation" during the latest decades, of the wedding ceremonies and parties in Western culture, seems to make us forget that in a wedding, the most important are the newlyweds themselves, not their clothing or that of their families and friends, or the making of a capital social event. I think that I've seen a survey showing an inverse relation between the cost of the rings and the duration of the marriage?
Sorry for this digression!

 

[elektra blue]

and your point is ?

i'm not hiding anything? so maybe i'm not lying either?

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

I think Cynthia Phaneuf was first LOL I mean, from things that happened while I was on Earth . I am sure that tradition is a century old LOL

LOL! 100! You've been around for a long time. Just kidding. Exactly! For sure, the tradition is as old as both sports' beginnings.

I definitely remember Cynthia Phaneuf's name. I don't remember her skating performances. I'll have to check YT and refresh my memory.

 

[4everchan]

LOL! 100! You've been around for a long time. Just kidding. Exactly! For sure, the tradition is as old as both sports' beginnings.

I definitely remember Cynthia Phaneuf's name. I don't remember her skating performances. I'll have to check YT and refresh my memory.

you can see two Cynthia's ...
1) before puberty when she won nationals... I don't remember the year.
2) At worlds 2010 : I think she should have won bronze but unlike others, she went there with no reputation score. Her LP was very good.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

Anna Shcherbakova got engaged to her boyfriend Artem Shakirov (a former hockey player and businessman).

​

Very attractive couple. Anna has beautifully matured. I almost didn't recognize her. She looks calmer, settled, happier, and more peaceful than she ever did skating in Eteri's factory. Good luck to her and her boyfriend, Artem.

Another 'hockey player + figure skater' alliance. We have gotten to see such unions on the ice quite often on Battle of the Blades. One of my fave pairings was Vanessa James paired with Ukrainian-Canadian hockey player, Akim Aliu, on Battle of the Blades! They made it to the final, and I think they should have won over Duhamel and her partner that season. It was a tight, entertaining contest, in any case. Scott Moir was a judge!

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

you can see two Cynthia's ...
1) before puberty when she won nationals... I don't remember the year.
2) At worlds 2010 : I think she should have won bronze but unlike others, she went there with no reputation score. Her LP was very good.

Ah, ah. Now, my memory has been jogged! Cynthia was a precocious phenom.

 

[lariko]

Very attractive couple. Anna has beautifully matured. I almost didn't recognize her. She looks calmer, settled, happier, and more peaceful than she ever did skating in Eteri's factory. Good luck to her and her boyfriend, Artem.

Another 'hockey player + figure skater' alliance. We have gotten to see such unions on the ice quite often on Battle of the Blades. One of my fave pairings was Vanessa James paired with Ukrainian-Canadian hockey player, Akim Aliu, on Battle of the Blades! They made it to the final, and I think they should have won over Duhamel and her partner that season. It was a tight, entertaining contest, in any case. Scott Moir was a judge!

From what Google can unearth, it appears that Shakirov is more of a son/heir of a real estate developer than a hockey player of any note.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

Congratulations!
"The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own. "Very little white satimman, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business! Selina would stare when she heard of it." But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union."
(Final paragraph of Jane Austen's Emma.)
For a viewpoint beyond Mrs Elton's:
"Mrs. Bennet found, with amazement and horror, that her husband would not advance a guinea to buy clothes for his daughter. He protested that she should receive from him no mark of affection whatever on the occasion. Mrs. Bennet could hardly comprehend it. That his anger could be carried to such a point of inconceivable resentment as to refuse his daughter a privilege without which her marriage would scarcely seem valid" (from Pride and Prejudice)
The "inflation" during the latest decades, of the wedding ceremonies and parties in Western culture, seems to make us forget that in a wedding, the most important are the newlyweds themselves, not their clothing or that of their families and friends, or the making of a capital social event. I think that I've seen a survey showing an inverse relation between the cost of the rings and the duration of the marriage?
Sorry for this digression!

Check out the extremely rushed wedding in the 1947 film, The Clock, starring Judy Garland and Robert Walker. It was directed by Vincente Minnelli, so it almost feels like a musical, but it's not. I was surprised (in retrospect it's a bit obvious, but I had been innocently drawn into the magic ) when I learned that it was entirely filmed on a studio lot in Hollywood with inserted footage of New York City scenes and backdrops. Like believing in Santa, at first, it definitely seemed like they were in NYC! BTW, Garland & Minnelli were dating and later married. Minnelli had directed Garland in the 1944 movie musical, Meet Me in St. Louis.

Robert Walker (who starred in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train) was married to Phyllis Isley (who was taken away from him by film mogul, David O. Selznick). It was Selznick who renamed Isley, 'Jennifer Jones', and made her a star. But was she as ever happy as she had been in her youth with Robert Walker when they were aspiring actors? She had given birth to two sons with Walker before they 'made it' in Hollywood. The oldest, Robert Walker, Jr., was his Dad's twin and followed in his acting footsteps. Check out the Walker, Isley, Selznick love triangle in the book, Star-Crossed: The Story of Robert Walker and Jennifer Jones by Beverly Linet. Walker's heartache over losing his wife and first love, Isley, contributed to his alcoholism and early death.

Forgive the drift, but it is about love, marriage, weddings, and sadly, affairs ... In any case, what is figure skating if not partly about the drama of human interactions. In the best programs, the great music and choreo, and the genuinely expressed emotions, are what draw us in. At least, that's true for me.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

From what Google can unearth, it appears that Shakirov is more of a son/heir of a real estate developer than a hockey player of any note.

But if he played hockey, that's the point, isn't it. Who cares if he was a star player or not.