Woman reveals how her fiancé dumped her before their wedding

A New York woman who was happily engaged to the man of her dreams has told of her devastation when her fiancé admitted to her that he wasn't ready to get married - and then got engaged to another woman just three months later.

But while some women might have let the heartbreaking experience put them off romance forever, Stacey Becker, 38, is now married to a wonderful man with whom she has a baby girl, and reveals in her debut book that the traumatic experience was actually the 'best thing that ever happened' to her.

'My family was cheering behind closed doors. They thought Brad was immature, impulsive and that I could do a lot better,' she tells Daily Mail Online of her family's reaction to the bombshell, adding that, now, she knows that they were right.

In her memoir, Knot the One: Why Getting Dumped Before My Wedding Was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me, Stacey, who is also a blogger, reveals that her fiancé proposed to her with a Tacori diamond ring while they were on a Caribbean cruise in 2006.

She was 29-years-old at the time and working as a high-powered attorney at the now-defunct financial firm Lehman Brothers in Manhattan, and now recalls how she felt like she had everything she ever wanted at her fingertips.

But after Stacey had purchased a $3,500 Reem Acra wedding gown, invited 300 people to an extravagant reception in Westchester, New York, and was planning a Hawaiian honeymoon, Brad abruptly called off their wedding that fall, leaving the bride-to-be heartbroken – and confused.

The hunky, six-foot-tall California native told her one day in November that he wasn't ready to get married.

'An hour later, he apologized and said that of course he loved me, he was just confused about whether he was ready to get married right now,' Stacey told Daily Mail Online.

She says the process of telling her friends and family about their broken engagement was 'incredibly painful', revealing that while the couple had yet to send out wedding invitations, they had set up a wedding website, registered at a number of stores and had even started receiving gifts.

'It was painful and embarrassing to have to repeat the story over and over, especially at work,' she shares.

Stacey says her parents and sister helped her cancel her wedding vendors and try to get her deposits back, but that she was mostly unable to get reimbursed and lost a lot of money.

However, despite their broken engagement, the author and Brad continued living together in New York, until he moved back to California for work.

But the couple continued to date long-distance 'for three and a half of the worst months of my life', Stacey says, sharing: 'There is no easy way to date your ex fiancé. Especially in a long distance relationship!'

She says Brad would visit her in New York every weekend, but things were never the same between them after he had called off their wedding.

Still, he told her that he wanted to be with her and just needed more time to figure things out.

'He piled on the I love you's and swore up and down that I was the one for him,' Stacey tells Daily Mail Online.

Finally, after she went to visit him in California, they decided to end their relationship for good.

'I was was just so sick of being sad, with no progress in sight,' she shares.

Then, just three months after he had called off their wedding, Brad called her and told her he was engaged to a woman he had just met.

'It felt like a punch in the gut,' she says, revealing that she was still mourning their relationship, so the fact that he had already gotten engaged to someone new was 'incomprehensible' to her.

However, just six months into his marriage, Brad and his wife got divorced.

Stacey says that her ex told her the news via Facebook, writing her a message that said: 'I've learned my lesson. Don't marry the rebound girl.'

She says she felt 'awful' for the woman - and knew she had dodged a bullet.

'She could have been me and had no idea what she was getting involved with,' the attorney shares.

And that's not the only reason she feels fortunate about being dumped.

Stacey got together with her longtime camp friend Jonny shortly after Brad had told her about his engagement.

On her would-be wedding day in August 2007, she attended a friend's wedding with Jonny, whom she had always had a crush on as a teenager.

The couple got engaged two years later after Jonny proposed to her during a camp alumni weekend.

They have now been married for five years, and live on Manhattan's Upper East Side with their 19-month-old daughter, Ellie, and their dog, Wally.

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