Late October had a trend: creepy old dudes getting engaged to women in their 20s. Dennis Quaid, 65, started us off by proposing to Laura Savoie, a woman 39 years YOUNGER than him. Then 60-year-old Peter Cook said “hold my beer” and got engaged to a 21-year-old college student. So… the age difference was actually the same in both situations. 39 years. Two generations, basically. Both engagements make me feel sick to my stomach, honestly. As does this: Dennis apparently wants this engagement to be pretty quick, despite the fact that he only started dating Laura about five months ago (at most):
Dennis Quaid and his new fiancée, Laura Savoie, are apparently not planning for a long engagement. On Sunday, the Parent Trap actor, 65, sat down with Entertainment Tonight to discuss his upcoming Netflix sitcom, Merry Happy Whatever and revealed that he plans to be a married man within the year.
“You’ve got a year, right?” Quaid explained. “And if you go past a year without getting married, then you’re suspect. That’s basic etiquette.”
The actor shared with the outlet that the couple’s wedding planning began “the next minute” after he popped the question to Savoie, 26, in Hawaii last month.
“I think she’s looking at wedding dresses today,” Quaid said to ET of his soon-to-be wife “She’s gotta get started.”
The Yours, Mine & Ours actor previously shared that the engagement had come as a surprise to Savoie. “I had the ring in my pocket. It has been kind of a month-and-a-half plan — I wanted it to be private,” Dennis had told Extra of the “sunset” proposal. “She was actually taking a selfie of us, and I put the ring in front and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ And then she fell down.”
I think that “married within a year of the engagement” etiquette is very old-school. It is, um, part of Dennis Quaid’s generation. The kids don’t feel the same way. The youths make their own rules – sometimes the engagement will last for a few weeks before the wedding, sometimes the engagement will last for years. I think if you really want to make it a question of what the current, formal etiquette is, the time has been extended to about a year and a half. If you’re fancy/posh, people look down on you if you don’t have the wedding by the 18-month mark, I think. But yeah… he’s rushing this whole thing. Engaged to a woman he’s known less than six months, wanting to marry a 26-year-old very quickly. Red flags all over the place.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
I used to have SUCH A CRUSH on Dennis…
Sigh…
I mean…HE COULD BE HER GRANDFATHER?!?!
I can’t….
Truly…
I can’t….
and he LOOKS LIKE HER GRANDFATHER when they stand next to each other.
and I think basic etiquette also says you don’t marry someone who could literally be your granddaughter.
no fool like an old fool.
Ha! came here to say the same thing.
She is younger than Jack. I mean…come on Dennis.
Me too & I cringe now. He’s growing up to be the embodiment of his Great Balls of Fire character. Jerry is still kicking in this one.
I don’t think that you need to be actually married within a year of getting engaged, but when people don’t start planning the wedding pretty soon after getting engaged it does tend to look suspect to me. Just think of all the bachelor/bachelorette couples (not the greatest example I know) – if they aren’t actively wedding planning you know they aren’t going to make it. For reference I am 32.
I agree with you. If you aren’t actively beginning to plan your wedding within a few months after the engagement, I tend to look at it as you probably weren’t ready to be engaged to begin with.
Yes, and wedding planning for longer than a year just sounds like a total nightmare to me. I think it can reasonably take about a year to pull a wedding together.
My fiance and I got engaged just over a month ago. I didn’t want a long engagement so we set a date in April. We’ve already got all the vendors booked and everything else planned out and now waiting for five more months seems like a very long time!
I agree. I got married just a few months after my engagement, which is unusual for most people. But couples who seem to drag their engagements out past a year often seem like they don’t end up making it down the aisle. Dennis is the same age as my parents, so I don’t think this is just old school thinking. I just don’t think it normally takes beyond a year to get married if you really want to.
Agreed. To me the purpose of engagement is preparing for marriage. It’s not figuring out if we are right for each other, nope, that’s what dating is for. So once we agree to marry I expect to start planning. No two or three year engagement for me.
I guess today’s theme at celebitchy is old guys marrying young women and having babies with them . We need an article about Alec Baldwin having a 5th child with his much younger wife Hilaria. We never explore why thiese younger women want to have a child with a much older man.
Kind of obvious, isn’t it? A healthy combination of daddy issues and gold-digging. They forget, perhaps, that before their old man dies and leaves them everything, they’ll have to play nursemaid to them, maybe for decades.
Nope. Just put him in a 5-star assisted living/retirement home and enjoy the freedom.
Hilaria is pregnant again? 🤦🏻♀️
Yep! And my sincere congratulations to the additional nannies about to be employed!
Just curious Dennis, what’s the etiquette on how much younger your new wife should be than your children. I mean she’s only one year younger than your son. Is that enough? 🙄
I don’t like when engagements are five years or more. I’d do it short and sweet.
His son is one year older than his fiancé.
I can’t get over that creepy photo of him. Remembering the days of The Big Easy.
Oh, he was gloriously charming, funny and sexy in TBE…could never have imagined how he is now!
Etiquette lolololololololol. BAD etiquette! It’s not even old school thinking. Sounds like he’s been listening to his child bride’s nonsense. Dates are determined by examining all the ‘layers’ lol. And their age difference could constitute a lack of layers or a great many heh heh.
It was a whole 2 1/2 years of procrastinating for my husband and I. And I never even wanted a wedding, we just finally went down to the courthouse on a day he had off during the week because we were like “we’ve been putting it off long enough” lol. We’re both procrastinators and especially dislike doing such official-type errands (social anxiety for me). Neither of us ever questioned if the other was putting it off due to hesitation about marriage. We both are really not the wedding planning type, the opposite actually. And we were already living together with a child, so we were already living a life practically married we just wanted to stop calling ourselves fiancé and get on with being husband and wife and he happened to have the day off to go with me to the courthouse. Of course if I had wanted to plan a wedding, my husband would have gone along with that too. I hope those around us didn’t consider our engagement “suspect”.
I have never understood why couples bother getting engaged and five years later they’re still “engaged.”
Could be for the families. Or saving money because bride and groom have to pay for everything. Travel arrangements. Graduations. Business. Anything really. Granted, some simply can’t take the final plunge, but I think a majority have to fit the occasion into existing lives.
We got engaged after dating 5 months BUT I was 36, he was 38 and we knew it was what we wanted. Married 8 months after the engagement, pregnant within 4 months and now we have an 8 month old. 🙂 never thought I would move that fast but when you know you know and we wanted to start our family. We wanted to get married and I knew it would be much harder to plan and pay for after we had a baby.
But no 39 year age difference. Ick.
I don’t know about etiquette, but I’ve never understood those people that stay engaged for like 5 years (and some never marry at all). What’s the point? In my culture you only propose if you intend to marry in the short term, otherwise there’s no need for an engagement to be a committed couple.
No wonder she fell down when he proposed.
I hate etiquette. Dead people bullying me is not my idea of an enjoyable way of living my life.
That said, he’s cracking me up. Guess he’s got to lock her down before she ages into some common sense and leaves his elderly butt.
The point of etiquette is to make every one to feel at ease. Warm greetings. Offering beverages to guests. Not canceling last minute. Being clear in invitations so guests aren’t confused.
Only horrible people use rules to make you feel bad. That’s the exact opposite of the point of etiquette.
A love story for the ages “She was taking a selfie of us…”
It takes 8 months to have your wedding dress come in (on average) and venues are usually booked 12-14 months out.
Idk many people who have the wedding they truly want in less than a year but sure 60 something year old on your third marriage, tell me how it goes.
Has he always had such a ruddy complexion? Wonder if he drinks a lot…
It was rumored when he was with Meg Ryan he was a huge substance abuser (coke and alcohol).
I don’t know about “etiquette,” but I think it’s weird when engagements drag on longer than a year and a half. The point of getting engaged isn’t just enjoying being engaged – you’re commuting to your intention to get married.
Ah yes….Dennis Quaid the arbiter of etiquette. WTF??
I’d definitely stand next to him and have a picture taken. Who wouldn’t look young and gorgeous next to him?
My fiancé and I just recently got engaged, and we’re planning a Sept. 2021 wedding. Because We’re not rich, we don’t have money pouring in from family members, and we’re saving on our own. Wedding’s are flipping expensive, and we don’t want to be in debt over 1 day.
So we’re waiting rather than rushing into it.
I don’t know much or care much about etiquette. The only thing I know is he is gross and him with someone younger than his kid is beyond gross. Makes him look like a desperate old perv.
I will defer to Mr Quaid on this one. After all, this is at least his fourth engagement so he has way more experience with this situation than all of us put together! 🙂
Oh Dennis Quaid, sit down – you would look a whole lot better to be me if you were walking her down the aisle as her father or even her grandfather!! And here people though Meg Ryan was the one with the issues!!
I have never heard that rule of etiquette in my life! My (now) husband and I had our wedding almost two years after the proposal. I didn’t know ANYTHING about planning a wedding before I got engaged. So, I had to research basic prices for everything (venues, catering, chairs, flatware, DJs, lighting, etc.), along with deciding where we wanted to have the wedding, along with figuring out a budget that gave us the wedding we wanted at a price that seemed reasonable. That is a lot of work for people with full time jobs (incl. travel) and a social life! Not to mention viewing the different venues, driving out there, tours, tastings, etc. It’s a massive time commitment. I envy the people who opt to elope or have casual weddings since I assume it’s much less stressful. But, hey, I’m the one that wanted black-tie and an outdoor space that wasn’t shared with the public.
I seem to recall he and Meg Ryan were engaged for more than a year? I could be wrong. However, he’s applied a new standard now since he’s a senior citizen.
I dunno about basic etiquette but it makes the most sense. Anyone who is engaged for longer than 2 years, I don’t get the point. Most of my friends got married within a year to a year and a half of their engagement. If you’re not going to get married within that timeframe (and that leaves plenty of time to plan a wedding), then don’t get engaged. Or just go to the courthouse and be done with it.
.. it is also ‘basic etiquette’ to be faithful to your spouse Dennis.
I wondered if it was a passive aggressive slam against Meg Ryan and her engagement (well, broken now) to John Mellencamp since there seemed to be no progress on a wedding date.