I once had a girl randomly tell me she wasn't ready to get married. I was just like "uh, okay, I wasn't planning to ask you". What she really meant was she was cheating on me and wanted to break up.

like, i mean it might be hard to bring up, but i'm going to be bluntly honest here, probably don't bring it up if you don't feel ready or comfortable talking about it, you can always talk about the fact you're uncomfortable about it as well. That's another option.

There's always a certain level of what i like to call conversational formality that one should apply. In the english language we use words like, the and ah an a i me, and various other words to help describe the specifics of what we're talking about.

You can say something like "i have a blue backpack, it sits on that wall over there, there's something important inside"

or you can say something like "blue bag, wall, important"

they both convey roughly the same message, but the former has vastly more detail in it, and is substantially more comprehend-able.

In the same way that you wouldn't say "blue bag" when referring to something specific, you shouldn't say "when are we getting married" in lieu of talking about marriage, it's just not formal, or respectful at all. Personally, i just ignore anything like that that people say, if they don't want me to know specifically what they're talking about it's not my problem, they can prod more, or simply do nothing about it. I could always ask, but again, wasn't my idea.

i don't know why people dance around topics like this, maybe i'm just highly autistic or something, but it just pisses me off. It's almost like my time isn't worth utilizing to the point of having a real discussion, so instead we're having a meaningless conversation that doesn't have a defined start or end, with no expected results.

for something like marriage it's literally as simple as "hey, so what do you think about marriage?" and you can go from there, which is even less confrontational than something like "when are you going to propose to me?"

Also just like don’t joke about such things if you aren’t prepared for people to take it as a hint