What’s Your Proposal Story?
This week marks seven years since Drew asked me to marry him. I’ve told the proposal story a bunch of times already, but for those who can’t get enough (or, you know, haven’t heard it before): Pre-Jackson, we always had a Friday evening tradition of meeting up after work and getting shit-faced at Happy Hour somewhere and then eating a drunken dinner around 8 and then falling dead-asleep at like 9:30 with our contacts still in. Romance! Anyway, it was a Friday evening seven years ago when Drew asked if I wanted to meet him for a walk in Central Park before getting shit-faced, and I was like, “Sure, why not?” At the time, we lived and worked in Manhattan, about a ten-minute walk from the park, so it was easy enough to meet there after work.
I had, a week earlier, given him my great-grandmother’s engagement ring, procured from my mother over the holidays, with instructions to have it sized and give it back to me “when he was ready.” Valentine’s Day was coming up, as was our vacation to Costa Rica — oh, to have the freedom to travel! — a few weeks later, but I didn’t think Drew was the kind of guy to propose on either of those occasions, so, when he asked me to meet him for a walk in the park, for a minute I did think, “Oh, this is it!” I remember taking extra care with my makeup and hair, and I took a quick selfie before heading out the door, I guess just to document the occasion in case it turned into An Occasion. But it was so cold outside that, by the time I got to the park, all I was thinking about was getting warm and how I couldn’t feel my fingers and I’d totally forgotten the possibility of a proposal.
So, it was a surprise after all when we were walking along a bridge in the park and Drew pointed to something on the ground below and I turned to look and saw in big chalk letters: “Wendy, Will you marry me? – Drew”. I said yes, he put my great-grandmother’s ring on my finger, we kissed, and then we went and got shit-faced. But on fancy champagne instead of our usual tequila because we are romantic like that. The rest, as they say, is history.
What about you? What’s your proposal story (if you have one)? Would you change anything about it?
So, I’m mostly a lurker here, but I just have to tell someone! We’re smack dab in the middle of it. The dude and I have been dating for 6 years and the last 6 months we’ve been talking about getting married and while I have said I don’t need a proposal or a ring, he wanted to ask me. I know he’s looked at rings, but hasn’t bought anything yet.
Finally, last night we were out at our local brewery and talking about summer plans and when my family would be in from out of state. I said “so, I think that day would be a good day for a wedding.” He says “I haven’t asked you yet.”
So I looked at him and said, “Well??” He says “will you marry me?” I say yes, we clink glasses <> and decide on that date. Went ring shopping today at lunch.
Then I teased him a little for not believing me. I *really* didn’t need a big to-do!
So we haven’t told family and friends yet. Going to wait until we get the ring and we can see my parents later this week. He doesn’t like the story – I think it’s perfect!
I love it!
Congrats!
Thanks! Dinner with the parents this weekend so we can tell them, call the other key people and then tell the world!
Congratulations! I am loving reading all these proposal stories. They’re all so sweet!
I love that story! Especially the part about getting shit-faced every Friday. That was us all weekend when we first moved in together because it always felt like a celebration just to be together 🙂
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About two weeks before A proposed, he had a day off and I didn’t. When I got home from work, I asked what he had done that day and he said he met up with his sister and I asked what they did and he was kind of weird about it and said they just got lunch and went shopping…I let it drop thinking, he probably ring shopped. Two weeks later, he asked if I wanted to meet after work at our favorite restaurant, which is a cute place in the neighborhood where I lived when we started dating. I kind of thought, maybe he is going to propose, but I thought that pretty much every time we went there for the past 6 months. It wasn’t until the next morning when I got up to get ready for work that I KNEW he was going to propose. A is in construction, so his getting ready typically includes brushing his teeth and putting on pants before he leaves. That morning, however, he had ironed (and left the iron out) and shaved (and left his shaving cream out). I wanted to get a manicure, but felt it might be a bit presumptuous to do so, but then my friend asked if I wanted to go get one with her at lunch, so I jumped at the chance. I watched the clock tick down to the time I had to leave, touched up my makeup about 10 minutes before, then headed out. I remember the butterflies in my tummy as I approached the restaurant, wondering how and when he would ask, if it would make a scene, etc. He was sitting at the bar when I arrived and had taken the liberty of ordering us oysters. I got a glass of prosecco and practically drank it in one gulp – I was so nervous!! Then thought, I need to slow down; I don’t want to be wasted before he asks! Anyway, we got all the way through dinner and no ring, no question. As we left the restaurant, he asked if I wanted to take a walk along the water, which was a block away. We did, and we stopped to look out at the boats and he said something about how nice the boats are and we should buy one, and I said, is that why you lured me down here? To convince me to buy a boat? And he got down on one knee and said, no I lured you down here to ask you to marry me. I screamed, he put the ring on, he picked me up as we embraced and people walking by stopped and watched and were clapping. It was so surreal. Then we went to visit my one best friend who lived nearby and had a glass of wine with her. Then we went home and had champagne (he had put the bottle of Veuve we had been saving in the fridge that morning, too, but I didn’t see that clue!) and ALSO got shit-faced. I had the absolute WORST hangover the next day, but it was such an amazing weekend!
People often laugh (sometimes nervously) when they hear our proposal story. When we first dated (for about the first 2 years!) we rarely saw each other even though we lived together before we officially started dating. I was working third shift full time, going to school during the day and working a part time gig on 2nd shift 4-5 nights a week (I’m exhausted just thinking about it). He worked first shift and had a 45 minute commute. We saw each other on weekends and briefly some evenings. So, we texted. A lot. Like back when you were charged per text and we had to pay for an unlimited text plan to save money. Anyway, we texted all the time, especially at night when I was working.
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I didn’t know that he was planning to propose. I’m super picky about jewelry so he didn’t buy a ring. But he texted me the proposal. And I thought he was messing with me, so we went back and forth for half an hour of him saying he was serious and me telling him to stop fucking with me and that he wasn’t funny. When I got home that night, he proposed on one knee with a small circular piece of metal (it was a part he worked with at his job) because his coworkers said he couldn’t propose empty handed. I still have that little piece 🙂
These stories make me happy =)
Agreed! They’re all really, really sweet.
My husband insisted he wanted to formally propose where I was more okay with making a joint decision and be done with it. He was ready for marriage before I was and so when I was ready, we bought a ring together and at the same time were in the process of moving in together. We discussed getting engaged within 6 months of buying the ring. We ended up buying a condo together instead of renting. I felt secure in owning something together while not quite engaged. The day we got the keys to our new home, we did a walk through on our own and we went out to the balcony where we had a beautiful view of the city. He started saying how he was excited to wake up to this view every morning and see me, etc…and then proposed, which he said wasn’t planned. We then went out to dinner where we had our first date to celebrate and we bought an air mattress and slept on the floor in the dark in our new home together. I felt a little more at ease that we were officially engaged when we did move in together. It was low key and exactly what both of us wanted out of it.
This is super sweet…love the part about sleeping on the air mattress in your new home 🙂
We got engaged on Friday after work also. I worked rotating shifts in Mission Control and was working swing shift that week. We didn’t have a specific tradition but for our first date we met up when I got off after a swing shift at midnight at a local wine bar. We had plans to do it again and I also had the thought that this might be *it* so I wore my favorite shirt and did my hair just in case. As my shift wrapped up, I texted him to check his plans and he asked me to run upstairs to historic Apollo mission control center because he thought he’d left something there and there he was, with ring.
Perfectly dorky engagement for a couple of NASA nerds.
That.Is.Awesome.
Wow!
A couple of months before Christmas in 2009, my boyfriend pulled me into a jewelry store and asked me what I thought looked nice. That was a pretty big hint that he was plotting something… The weekend before Christmas, we had planned a nice evening out, to have a fancy dinner and see Handel’s Messiah at the Kennedy Center. We were leaving a few days later to visit my mom in Albuquerque for the holiday, and my bf mentioned wanting to get to the bank and make a deposit to our joint account so we’d be covered for trip expenses. Well, the Saturday we’d planned our nice evening out, there was a huge snowstorm in the DC area. 18+” of snow, the Metro closed, the Kennedy Center cancelled all performances – and he was stressing out because the bank was closed too, and he couldn’t make the deposit. I was like, no big deal, just do it the morning before we leave. Fast forward to Christmas Eve in Albuquerque: we were staying in a little inn, in a room with a fireplace. After walking around Old Town Albuquerque to see the luminarias, we were drinking wine by the fire, and he asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes, then he pulled out the ring and said he’d intended to propose on the terrace of the Kennedy Center the previous weekend, but the ring had been in the safe deposit box at the bank! It was worth the wait, though. We’ve been happily married for 5 years now!
We were on vacation in Hawaii. I forget what we’d done that day, but we got back to our hotel room at 8pm and I was just wiped. It was an active vacation, not a lie-on-the-beach vacation, so I was pretty much ready for bed. It was our first night in Maui and my now-husband said we should go for a walk on the beach. I was reeeeally not into it, but he’s like, come on, we’re in Hawaii! So I’m like, ugh, fine, let’s go. Well, we’re walking along the beach, talking about whales (which we’d seen on the trip) and he pulls out of his pocket this little toy whale that I’d bought that held a necklace for my niece. I laughed and asked him what he was doing with that, because I’d been bugging him with it since I bought it (its mouth opened, and I would make it raaarrrr at him, he thought it was funny). He opened up the mouth, and there was the ring. I don’t even know what I did, I know I was super confused for a sec, I think I said “what’s that?” ahhahaha. And then he asked me to marry him and I said yes and he put it on my finger. Then we walked for a bit more, we were the only ones on the beach and the moon was out, shining on the water. It was fantastic.
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It was a surprise for me. He’d been scared of marriage (due to his parents divorcing, and then his brother having an absolutely awful marriage and divorce). He’d given me a ring sizer at Christmas and taken my size, but honestly I’d thought that was a delaying tactic and I had mentally given him till the end of March to come to a decision or else I was planning on breaking up with him. He proposed beginning of Feb. 🙂
Bonus points to him for using the whale toy. Love it!
It was pretty cute. 🙂 I ended up giving my niece just the necklace, and not the whale. I’ve still got the whale. 🙂
Also I just realized that this week marks 7 years that my husband proposed to me too! On Sunday it’ll be 7 years exactly. I guess Wendy and I got engaged within a week of each other. 🙂
Yep, Saturday is the actual anniversary for us.
I had just taken and passed my board exam, and I agreed to go with S on a day trip to Memphis (that he’d been bugging me to take for at least a month! I had to study! Attempt #1 denied.) Memphis had always had a special place in our relationship- we went there together on a class field trip (waaay before we started dating)
We spent most of the day hanging out- we bought tickets to see Ira Glass at the Orpheum, we watched dragon boat races at the park, we ate lots of BBQ. We walked up and down Beale Street, and decided to watch some live music at BB King’s. We sat at the bar, and he kept trying to get me to go upstairs- but with the wait, I told him we miss the show, etc. He was trying to get me up there to propose. Attempt #2 thwarted.
After we finished our drink at the bar, he suggested that we go to the Peabody to see the duck parade. We got there a couple of minutes early and decided to look at the great antique store they have in the back of the lobby. It was closed, so we just window shopped.
We had been looking at rings for a while, and as we were looking in the windows I saw a ring and off-handedly said something about it being nice. He was behind me, and said “Yeah, but it’s not as nice as this one”. I turned around thinking that he had seen a ring in a different window, but there he was, with a ring in hand. My first thought was “OH GOD, how did he get that- we’re going to be in so much trouble” and then he got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him. I was so shocked that I didn’t answer him! But then we hugged and laughed, and I started crying like an idiot.
We didn’t get to see the ducks. But we did have two old ladies follow us for two blocks after we left the hotel, just so they could congratulate us!
I remember this! You had messaged me before you came, letting me know you would be in town and that you might have some free time–that obviously didn’t happen. Best excuse to be blown off!
I’m totally a lurker on this site, but I totally love our proposal story. It was super simple, we were at home on a random Saturday. I was upstairs in our bedroom changing when I suddenly heard our two (big) dogs barreling down the hallway. They ran in and jumped on our bed followed by my husband who told me the puppies had a question to ask me. Each one had a hand-written note that that said “will you” and “Marry me?” He then got down on one knee and asked.
It was totally low-key and perfect. I knew it was coming, but I was still surprised which made it even better! We ended up calling some friends and family after and then going out to dinner to celebrate!
That’s so cool he used the dogs! At some point I’ll need to steal that idea and use our cats to deliver baby news…
My story is a little out of order because we had talked for a couple months about marriage, and had been planning a big trip to Australia/New Zealand at the same time. By the time we were in Australia, we had settled on the idea of getting married there, and had booked a little wedding planner person to sort out the paperwork and officiant and whatnot. So I kept joking with him that we were going to get married before he ever actually proposed! But he insisted that he had already decided on his plan before we picked the wedding date and he wasn’t going to change it. About two weeks before the wedding, we were at a ranch in the middle of the Australian outback. He told me before we went to bed that he was going to wake me up in the middle of the night. Needless to say, I figured that was it! So he woke me up at 2 am, I pulled on my baggy ranch clothes and tried to sort out my hair, and he took me outside to lay in the grass to watch a meteor shower. I guess he had checked the dates, and since one of our first dates was star gazing, he thought it’d be a good idea. It was very romantic, but I had a hard time caring about the stars when I was just waiting for him to say something! We finally got up to go back inside and then he got down on one knee and proposed. It was very sweet. Then we got married two weeks later, and now it’s been 4 years!
My husband had told me that his aunt and uncle were visiting from out of town and we were going to have dinner with them on this Friday night. He had the day off work. I did not and I got a phone call from him saying he locked himself out of the house. So I drove home from work at lunch to let him in, and it turns out I also didn’t have my key. After unsuccessfully trying to break in, we gave up and he called a locksmith while I went back to work where I told all of my coworkers how we were the worst couple ever, since not even one of us can be depended upon to have our house key. Plus, I was thinking how his aunt and uncle were coming to visit and he had to clean the house a bit.
Anyway, I get home and am petting the cat and wondering around downstairs and finally make it up to our bedroom where he is wearing a suit and has flowers and proposes (he said he’d called my name, but I must not have heard him – he was sweating it for a good 10 minutes while he knew I was in the house). The aunt/uncle visit was a ruse so I wouldn’t make plans (he’s excellent at surprising me) and then we went to a fancy dinner and stayed at a nice hotel overnight. It was perfect, and only made better by the fact that we both locked ourselves out of the house the day he was trying to plan his perfect proposal.
These stories are the best! I’ve followed Wendy since she started the site, but somehow I’d never heard about Drew’s proposal. It’s precious!
I have to share mine, too – my husband outdid himself. We had agreed that marriage was something we were going to go for at dinner two weeks before his birthday. We had tickets to his favorite MLB team’s game on the night of his birthday, so I started planning to surprise him by proposing to him there. I figured that since we both knew we wanted to go for it, who cares who asks? I was bugging him to go ring shopping, and I think he might have known something was up because he made me promise to go on a morning run before hitting the stores. The morning came, I was dreading the idea of a run, and he dragged me out of the house despite all my complaining and griping at his insane cheerfulness. As we passed a bridge he talked about how he looked forward to crossing many more bridges together, and then at the top of the next hill he faked a sprained ankle. I was so determined to get the run over with that I didn’t stop for a few feet, and had to go back once I realized he was hurt. But yep, not hurt! Totally down on one knee and ready to propose. He asked, I said yes, and the rest if history! He never has to surprise me with anything again because that was such a good one.
Othello and I were in a LDR when I was in college but decided we were going to marry when I got back. I wanted to show off an engagement ring to all my friends at school before I graduated (man I was young!). I had some bonus frequent flyer miles, so I flew Othello out to visit me (which was a big deal, since we only saw each other every 6 months when I was in school since we were both broke). He and I did a day trip to NYC.
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On the bus ride into NYC, it was clear to me that he had a ring in his pocket, because he kept fiddling with it to make sure it was still there. We got to the city and he was looking for just the right place to propose. He didn’t have much of a plan, but when we stopped for lunch at a spot in Little Italy, he decided to propose there. He told me that he’d rather propose in Italy (I had spent part of the summer there the previous year and I talked about it non-stop), but Little Italy was the next best thing. He also promised to take me to Italy for our tenth anniversary (which is this year – we need to start planning). He was so nervous that he forgot to getting on his knee, but since neither one of us like being the center of attention, we were both fine with it. I don’t think our waiter even noticed that we had gotten engaged. After lunch, we got gelato and wandered around the city in a heavenly bliss until we had to catch the bus back to my school.
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Even though we got back super late, my entire dorm was waiting for us to get home, since he had told one of my girlfriends he was going to propose in NYC and they all wanted to hear everything.
He actually asked me twice. The first time was in a letter he sent while he was in boot camp but I hadn’t graduated yet and the thought of marriage was scary so I declined.
A year later I had flown out to visit him while he was on leave and I was on winter break. He had been freaking out for weeks before the trip about an important package that hadn’t made it to him yet. His dad works for a jewelry company and shipped it to him in the unmarked regular mail and it was taking forever.
We spent the week at his aunt’s place in LA while she was away over Christmas. Christmas morning we’re completely naked exchanging gifts and he gets nervous all of the sudden and tells me to close my eyes, open them up and he’s on his knee asking me. We’ve been married 11 years!
Today should be an annual tell-your-proposal-story day! I never tire of them. And even if I’ve heard your proposal before, I always learn a detail I didn’t know before. Like, I didn’t know about the CallMeHobo’s thwarted proposals. And I didn’t know Wendy and Drew had an upcoming trip to Costa Rica planned. Did you? Next year, Wendy, you gotta add in a new detail like that. But I’m sure I’ll forget some details so it will feel new to me. Point, I like annual tell-your-proposal-story day!
We went away to the mountains for the weekend and woke up one morning there, looked at each other and both said “Let’s get married!” And that was that. There was no engagement ring. In fact we forgot to have rings on the day we got married so we made temporary rings out of our hair when we got married and later ordered wedding rings. Very non-Bridezilla of me, I might add!
I love Dr. Sue Jones!
Fun! Mine is kind of similar to Wendy’s in that I was given a ring my mum had inherited from her aunt that I gave to my husband and we had remodelled. I stressed he could give it to me whenever once it was finished.
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While it was being made we had a weekend away booked in Noosa. I thought maybe we’d have the ring before then but my husband said he’d checked and no, not yet so I went with no expectations. On the first night on a beautiful November evening after dinner we were walking on the beach at dark just chatting about the future, plans, boring stuff and my husband said ‘i was thinking of asking you to marry me.’ Me, being the supergenius I am didn’t quite get it and said ‘are you serious?!’ Turned out he was which was fantastic and he apologised for not having the ring.
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After we got back to the hotel I started ringing family and while I was on the phone with my mum and he disappeared, then reappeared with the ring! Turns out he had it all along but the ring box was freakishly huge so he couldn’t bring it with him. I’ll always love how he managed to surprise me even though I thought I had it all figured out.
So Mr. TheGrey and I met in the first class I taught at a community college; he was one of my students. On our three year anniversary, I happened to be teaching in the same classroom. I had two back to back classes. He got there before the first one let out and flagged down a couple of the students who were showing up for the second class, asking them to keep everyone out for a few minutes. Then he came into the classroom when it was empty. He was dressed in a suit and had a bouquet with him. We had talked many times about being married, about what we wanted, etc., but I had thought he was going to propose at Christmas a few months later when we went back to visit his family in a different state. He came in with an untied shoelace. At the time he was working in sales, so him wearing a suit wasn’t that unusual but the roses made me suspicious. I pointed out the untied shoelace and he said, “Oh, darn. Can you hold these?” and handed me the roses. He knelt down to tie his shoe and instead pulled the ring box out of his pocket (so smooth) and asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes, we kissed, he left to go back to work, and my students all crowded in and wanted to look at my ring.
When I got home I dried one of the roses and some of the baby’s breath and put them into pendants, one for me to wear and one that hangs from the rear-view mirror in his car.
Ha, our story is kinda weird and goofy but so are we. For Christmas, he insisted he wanted to buy me a whole outfit, which I was begging him not to. He’s just not a shopper and I told him I’d feel obligated to wear it even if I didn’t like it. Late on Christmas Wve at my parents house, he gave me my gift, which consisted of a bunch of smaller gifts ( he likes buying me a lot of little things). I keep digging through the gift bags until I get to a Dolly Parton wig which I’m stoked about because I love her but probably a weird gift for most people. Then the last bag has this hideous, giant turquoise t-shirt in it…clearly a thrift store find and not the good kind. And there’s a big V of cowgirl fringe on the boob area. So I’m just like, “oh my god, he bought me an outfit and it’s soooo bad.” So I pull the shirt out and the fringe swishes a little so I can tell there’s something under there. He had ironed on the words, “Will You Marry Me?” beneath the fringe. Like I said, weird proposal, but definitely one-of-a-king, I think.
I don’t know if one-of-a-king is a deliberate typo, but I love it, and I intend to use it in the future.
Nadio and I got engaged just over a month ago! We’ve been dating almost 2 years, and last summer we had begun talking about engagement in the not-too-distant future. I suspected the proposal would happen during our Christmas trip to Aruba, Valentine’s Day, or our anniversary. But the actual proposal caught me – and, as it turns out, Nadio – a bit off-guard, which was perfect.
It was the Sunday night before Christmas, and we were packing to leave for Aruba at 6:00 the following morning. We’d had a rough weekend… Nadio skidded on black ice while driving to visit me and totaled his car (though thankfully, he was OK). We live 5 hours apart, so I drove the 2.5 hours to the accident site and back to get him. Well, as Nadio was throwing everything into his suitcase, he suddenly stopped and said “I don’t have my passport.” (He’s from Europe, so not having that form of identification – let alone right before an international trip – is a *really* big deal.) I kept my cool and helped him turn the house upside down looking for it, but it was nowhere to be found. Poor Nadio was extremely stressed out; I had never seen him so upset and mad at himself. He kept saying “I can’t believe this / I really messed up / I feel awful / etc.” And finally, I responded, “Look, no matter what happens we’re going to get through this. Together.” He tells me now that I’d said so with such conviction, he knew that was the right time. So he marched straight to the bedroom closet and pulled a little box off the top shelf. I was confused for a split second – “What are you doing, babe?!” But then when he got down on one knee (in his underwear! heehee) and proposed, I started sobbing, threw my arms around him, and said I wanted nothing more than to marry him.
Two days later, after multiple trips between his country’s embassy and the local police station (to report a stolen passport), Nadio and I were off to Aruba for our “engagement-moon”! He had been planning to propose over Christmas Eve dinner during our trip, but this makes for a much more unique and memorable story!
I accidentally proposed last August! We were celebrating our anniversary when I finally worked up the guts (thanks margaritas!) to tell him that I thought we should talk about getting married next year. He responded with “Yeah, babe”. A couple minutes later he started giggling and asked if that was his proposal. I told him, sure if he wanted it to be. We just got my ring in January and are getting married on our next anniversary in August!
When my husband and I first started dating, he had just bought a condo. Let me tell you, that thing was filthy, not up to code, dark and dank and full of dog piss. Over the next several months he starting renovating it by himself. One day, he invited me over after work so we could “make some design decisions together” (which was already a big step, I thought!). We chatted about how we’d like to do certain things, and once we reached the bedroom, I turned around and he was on one knee.
We got married the next year, between both of our grandparents’ 60th anniversaries, and he finished the condo in time for our wedding night. The condo turned out amazing, and when I look around I see the sheetrock I helped him cut, the cabinets we put up together even though I barely knew how to use a drill, the red kitchen sink we spent months looking for; so many awesome memories, and we get to live in them!
I’m not sure if I told my proposal story on here… One night a little over a year ago, Bassanio asked if i wanted to play one of our favorite board games and I thought, why not, it’s been a while. At one point he left to do something and took the game with him and came back with another one. I was a bit confused because the one he came back with was a slightly different model of the game, so I accused him of rigging the game. Super romantic, I know, but he can’t get anything past me. He was like, just go with it, so even though my BS detectors were on high alert, I say back down. Anyway, I look down at it and immediately noticed it spelled out “marry me”. He got down on one knee and said something, I don’t remember what exactly but it was sweet, and I said yes. Then we had super fancy French champagne I had recently gotten to celebrate something else. Turns out he’d had this plan for a while – we’d played that game at least once a week in college, so we had a lot of history with it. He’d bought a second game board and rigged some of the pieces, but the version we owned was the travel version of the game and he’d gotten the regular one.
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Anyway, we called our family and friends the next morning and everyone was so happy for us. Then we went to lunch and he was so excited he accidentally dented the car bumper. Oops!