Just curious who does that now or if anyone ever really did. I figure with such a wide variety of ages of dopers we’d get an interesting range of responses.
Women, did/would you expect such a thing? Respect such a thing? Be charmed? Put off? Yell, “Get up, you pussy?”
Okay, I tried really hard to remove my bias from this informal poll, but I just failed
Women, have you ever proposed marriage? Gays and lesbians, what are your proposal stories?
I’ll go first: I’m not married and have never asked anyone to marry me. But my mom says I’m a catch.
Apparently I didn’t. We were in the bleachers at Candlestick Park, just after the national anthem but before the first pitch of a Giants/Dodgers game. As I recall it, we were sitting down, but as **Rhiannon8404 **remembers it we were still standing. But we do agree that I wasn’t on one knee.
We swept the weekend series, by the way.
Getting down on one knee seems like the kind of thing done in proposals that are maybe in public, and maybe come as kind of a surprise to the woman. I wouldn’t like either of those things. Don’t put me on the spot, bastard.
I did, in her living room, down on one knee and saying all the appropriate things. When I finished she had a big grin on her face and said, “Do it again, please!”
So, I went through the whole thing, with a bit more drama and over-acting on my part, hoping she wouldn’t ask for a third rendition. She didn’t, and said yes.
And that was as good as it got with her. We didn’t get married, largely due to her sexual adventures with other guys, for which she wasn’t particularily apologetic. Fortunately, we never got around to shopping for a ring.
The two guys who proposed to me in the US did (one American by birth, the other born British in Jamaica and recently naturalized). It’s not part of my cultural mores, to me it just added to the ridiculousness of both situations; the first one set his proposal as this sort of… saving me from having to go back to The World Outside where I would never be able to achieve happiness (dude, I know you’ve got good intentions, but seriously, you’re insulting my country along with almost 200 others), the second one proposed right after I’d told him “you know, I just realized I don’t want to see you ever again.”
I proposed (standing up) at Disneyland in 1979, as we walked through Fantasyland past King Arthur’s Carousel. She turned and hugged me, and we stood there, holding one another for a L-O-O-O-NG time. Then she turned me down, but we went on dating, and I kept periodically asking (and getting turned down). Lest anybody get a creepy stalkerish vibe, I hasten to add that none of her refusals were “and that’s FINAL” refusals; they were more along the lines of “Not now. Ask again later.” Yes, exactly like a Magic 8 Ball.
During Christmas week in 1982, she visited me in Honolulu, while I was stationed at SUBASE, Pearl Harbor. When I gave her her Christmas present (it was a gold pendant with a small diamond) I told her, “If I had thought you’d say ‘yes,’ this would have been a ring.” She replied, “I would have accepted it.”
The following evening was New Year’s Eve, and I took her to a.piano bar that she had told me she was fond of. When she introduced me to the pianist, I clarified that I was her fiance. She raised no objections to that, so I presumed that she considered our exchange of the previous evening to be her official acceptance.
In January, her back in California, and me in PH, we began making our plans in earnest, and we married over Thanksgiving weekend in 1983.
I proposed to my late wife in a restaurant on one knee with a ring in a box.
She said yes and there was applause from the other patrons.
We always were a bit traditional like that.
He proposed on Valentine’s day, while we were visiting my family in Montreal. It was before breakfast, and I was sitting on the edge of my Mom’s bed, because that’s where we sleep when we’re there. He pulled out the ring and asked - no big speech, no kneeling, no drama. I said “duh.” Happily ever after.
Yes, we got home from an anniversary dinner out. He came back into the living room, got on one knee, popped the ring box open, and proposed. No fuss, no onlookers, but very romantic and lovely. This was three years ago.
I “proposed” to my husband, but it was basically “I need health insurance and am getting to old to be covered by my parents, so we should formalize this”. His main concern was that he really didn’t want to be bothered with any details. Since I didn’t, either, we just went to the courthouse one afternoon. We were entirely broke.
By that point, about three years into the relationship, the “we are a unit” issue had long become obvious to both of us. I wanted the paperwork, for practical and emotional reasons, and he was happy to indulge me.
We’ve been married well over a decade, and it’s been a steady sort of satisfied.
In my opinion, I proposed sitting at our table in the restaurant when I wordlessly gave her the ring. The fact that we were in a luxury restaurant and she had just been given a ring with a design that held significance for her told her all she needed to know. She broke down and cried. The traveling musicians found an excuse to come over to serenade us, and to cop a gander at the ring. They were, I’m sure disappointed. It wasn’t an impressive ring. But, as I say, the design was perfect for Pepper Mill.
On the other hand, in Pepper Mill’s evaluation, this doesn’t count as a formal proposal, precisely because I didn’t say anything. I did actually ask her, in words, in the parking garage after we left the restaurant. I didn’t get on one knee. It was in a garage, after all.
I proposed to my wife while we were both seated on the bench in front of the Buddha at the koi pond on the Huntington Library grounds. No knees, and I froze after pulling out the ring until she prompted me that I wanted to ask something.
I didn’t propose on one knee, but only because I was worried that such a manoeuvre would completely destabilise the gondola. Yes, in Venice. Venice, Italy (not Las Vegas)! Yes, it was cliched - why the hell not? And it was sort of in public, but we’re not ones for the big public show; I was so discreet that even the gondolier didn’t know it had happened until we told him. Married just over two years now.
Yes. We’d been rounding up and branding cattle much of the day. When things slowed that afternoon I asked her to walk with me to see some petroglyphs and just get away from all the dust and bellowing. She had a sleeveless plaid shirt on and a little smudge of dirt on her nose that made her look hopelessly adorable. We sat on a rock outcrop and talked for awhile, then I turned to her side, dropped to one knee, pulled out the ring that had been burning a hole in my pocket and asked if we could spend the rest of our lives that way.
