The last time i posted in this section was when i wasn't engaged, but now I am married and am willing to share my pre-engagement experience when my husband came home to meet me for the first time before engagement.
Like i had suggested the preparation of a list, honestly, I never needed to make one myself because my situation was such that i was too far away from home, parents and family, and my husband was also in another corner of the world. The only means of communication before deciding whether we wanted to go further was through the internet: e-mailing and chatting. Now here, a question may arise that chatting to na-mahram is HARAAM so why did I go through this method of communication?? This was not chatting to kill time, flirt or any such reason. This chatting began after the proposal came and because there was no way to meet and talk it out, the internet was the only means of communicating as mentioned earlier, my now-husband, myself and my parents were all in different parts of the world.
Although this kind of communication takes much longer, but if both the people involved are serious about the relationship and their sole purpose of communication is to end up getting marreid provided things work out, then it is allowed and the length of the period of time is more effective and much better I think. Through this kind of communication, we both could ask each other alot more than we could have done if we would have met face to face. On the spur of the moment, (since it sounds funny to sit there with the list of questions), you may forget to ask the person some important questions. I once forgot to ask the guy his age when we met and yes, age was one of the important factors I was looking for. So communicating in the manner I did with my husband was much more convenient.
However, i must say that when things were finalized and when he finally decided to come home to meet me (I was back home then), we met for the first time and the engagement was kinda confirmed...but we didn't have anything to say since all that we wanted to know about each other, we had done so through e-mailing and chatting...
..so the two of us just sat there, shy and smiling, nothing to say....I had promised to make something that will require him to work on and so I handed that to him and he had promised to open it right infront of my eyes, but it was so tightly sealed that he couldn't open it and had to go home and start working on it...it was like a puzzle but I had written and cut it myself....INTERESTING..... :) ...
The bottom line is, every experience is different and while it is natural to worry and think about how and what its going to be like, once you're into that situation, things start falling in place automatically. Embarassing things may happen too (like we sat there with nothing to talk about) but the fun part is you can always sit and look back at those moments and laugh together while enjoying the memories (if you end up together....
that is).