We had been living together six months. We both knew we were going to get married someday, but he is decidedly not the type to make plans or take initiative. I wanted to formalize things and make plans, and I was worried he would drag his feet forever. So I took him out to dinner, and then asked him afterwards, as we were sitting on a park bench.
His response was to say yes, and then to say he had been planning to ask me.
My birthday was three days later. He got down on one knee and asked me after we were home for the night. I don’t usually go for that sort of thing, but it was pretty adorable.
He wanted to get me a ring, but he’d already given me a ring the previous Christmas, and I didn’t want another one.
ETA: I forgot the best part. After I asked him, a bird flew overhead and pooped on the shoulder of my dress. Yuck!
We had talked about getting married on and off for awhile - we had been together - hang on - I have to look at the Christmas Tree Ornament to count back - 6 years by then. It was right after the first anniversary of 9-11 and we were sitting up really late just talking and watching TV (we usually do that on Friday nights) and he got a little quiet, then said, “Remember that marriage stuff we talked about?” I answered, “Yeah.” He said, “Set it up.”
The next day I went to Target and got my rings.
He did pick the date though - November 27 - he figured that he’d ALWAYS remember the date since it was the day before Thanksgiving! I waited until the reception to point out that Thanksgiving comes on a different date every year. He did luck out THIS year though - it actually WAS the day before Thanksgiving
This reminds me of something I did for my not-yet-wife. She had just had a big operation and was staying mostly in bed. I wanted to cheer her up, so I got her a couple of gifts and wrapped them in boxes. After giving her a Get Well card, I handed her the first box 9while showing her that there were two of them. She opened the first, and a look of extreme confusion came over her.
[spoiler] It contained a ceramic Precious Moments figure. This kinda thing, with the teardrop-shaped eyes:
I didn’t but I did take her to a place where we carved our initials into a tree exactly a year before. It was nice, but she knew I was going to do it because of how nervous I was acting. I’m not good at surprises.
With ex-wife #1:
We’d lived together for nearly 2 years, and had an 18 month old son. I was usually off work on Wednesdays, and rolled over the morning of June 4, 1986 and said to her: “You know what we should do? We should go get married.” We went out and bought matching wedding bands, and at exactly 1pm that afternoon the Justice of the Peace pronounced us “Mann & wife”.
I was 22, she was 24.
With ex-wife #2:
We’d dated for nearly 4 years, and lived together for 2. About a month before the proposal we’d gone to the jewelry store and of the 40 rings in the display case I picked out the EXACT same ring that she’d chosen earlier. Fast-forward to Memorial Day weekend, 1998. I put the ring in my pocket and took her to the park where we’d first met. (It was dark, and we were the only ones there.) As we neared “our” tree I pulled out the ring, fell to one knee, recited a poem I’d written especially for this occasion, and asked her to marry me.
She said yes.
I was 34, she was just shy of 29.
Yup. She knew it was coming (had already been dress-shopping, in fact), and the actual proposal had a long and somewhat comical routine leading up to it. Getting down on the knee was the signal “Now We are Being Serious.”
(“We” meaning me, I guess. I … talk that way sometimes)
I did propose on one knee. But my wife was sitting, so standing would have been kind of awkward.
I proposed on Christmas Eve without much fanfare. It came as such a surprise, I had to remind her that she should answer the question rather than just gasping.
I picked Christmas time because her family were in town and it seemed better to let her show off the ring in person and not just talk about it over the phone. It really shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise since we’d sort of informally agreed that we were going to take that step.
(And, yes, I did kind of screw myself with Christmas presents. No way to top that one. We closed on our house on our anniversary, so there’s no topping that one either.)
Yes, I’m pretty sure I got on one knee. I took her to the hotel where we met (no, we didn’t meet like that - it was a wedding reception in the ballroom), and as I remember it, I got down on one knee as I produced the ring and asked her.
Heh, I proposed while she and I were on the couch watching a James Bond movie. We had been dating for about 6 years, so I didn’t think it would be such a surprise. I slipped the ring out of my pocket, showed it to her and said something incredibly clever, like “Um, do you want this?”. It worked, though, and is still working 25 years later.
He knew I wanted a dog but kept saying “no”. One night he handed me his laptop with an ad on it for a “free to good home” dog and said I should call about it. I did, and then I went to pick her up. I brought her into the house at almost 11 pm and said “I have to go out and get dog food, she didn’t come with anything” and he said:
“So you want your ring now too?”
…the stores were closing so I had to hurry - I said “Wait until I get back.” When I got back with the dog food I said “What was that about a ring?”
It was May 20, 2011, the day before the world was supposed to end - he later posted on Facebook that he asked me to marry him because the next day “either way, life as I know it is going to end.”
No real proposal, no kneeling, just an unexpected trip to the ER for him that wound up costing a pretty penny. After the crisis was averted I just said something like “We know we’re going to get around to it eventually, but you need my health benefits now, so why wait?”
No. My now-wife and I had been seeing each other for a while. A relatively short time in the scheme of things, but it was clear to both of us this was going to be permanent.
I knew that we wanted children, and she told me one day that (for medical reasons I won’t go into here) that we had to start that right away, and that we had to be married before we threw away the birth control. I agreed, and I thought the matter was settled. So we got married right away.
She still gets mad, though, once in a while, that she didn’t get an old-fashioned, on bended knee, proposal.
We had never planned to get married. We already had a house and had lived together a long time. But then she lost her job and her health insurance, so I said, “I guess we should just get married so you can be on my insurance,” we got married the next week, and she never took my last name. Nothing really changed. My family tried to make a big deal about it, but we both joke about getting divorced, but staying together just to freak them all out.
First wife: on the phone (I was in the army in CA and she was in college a few states away fretting about tuition). We’d been on and off for like 10 years and since nobody else would tolerate either of us… That lasted about 15 years (the last 7 of which sucked).
Second wife: we were moving a sofa out of her condo to the nearby dumpster. We’d been dating a couple weeks and I tossed out, “So, you want a ring or what?” She evidently thought I was kidding but after a few more weeks realized I was dead serious (a rare occasion). Second marriage for both of us so we dispensed with the formal ceremony and did the vows ourselves in front of the fish tank 12:01 a.m. New Year’s Day in our pajamas. I can still remember the vows we did. I said, in my best Tobi Chief voice, “You Wanna marry me?” she said, “Yeah. You wanna marry me?” I said, “Yeah.” She said, “Ok. We’re married.” Coming up on 5 years now and it just keeps getting better.
