I’m sure I must have seen it or heard about it somewhere. It’s definitely less common, though.
I love the role play in all of this, I’m kind of a sucker for the whole charade. Watching couples propose is like watching those videos of troops surprising their kids at school. I love to see love happening. I’m a hopeless romantic.
My husband and I met at age 18, started dating when we were 19 and since we’d been close friends, it was serious from the start. We talked not only about having kids but how childcare duties would be shared, decided on the standard of living we wanted (talked in circles a bit, because of his family background his, “I don’t want to make too much money” was my “I want to be pretty well off.”) We talked about adoption, which was our first plan, and how we would coordinate graduate school, and of course the plan never survives first contact with the enemy, but we were trying our damndest not to go in blind. I judged him to be highly intelligent, highly dependable, predictable, responsible, gentle, safe - my dream guy. And yeah he’s always been all those things.
Anyway, I love the girl/boy romance games, so of course I wanted a traditional proposal. I was less enthusiastic about the wedding, but we kept it small and it turned out beautifully. I just remember the day we married - after four years together - feeling zero anxiety or stress about what I was doing because we knew each other, we knew we were the right choice for each other, and there were no surprises - well, not from each other, anyway. Life’s been throwing us one curveball after the next since the day we met. But we married well, so we’ve endured.
My husband pointed out when I shared this thread that the proposal ritual is a handy social script that helps guide people through what is often an anxiety-provoking moment, so it makes sense that people often default to it.
In Chad Kultgen’s The Average American Male, the unnamed narrator unwittingly “accepts” a proposal by his girlfriend, whom he had no intention of marrying:
GIRLFRIEND: Do you ever see us getting married?
NARRATOR: Um, sure…sometime in the future…
GIRLFRIEND: So then we’re basically engaged! I can’t wait to tell all my friends!
(Later, when he’s roped into wedding planning with her parents, her father asks him if he got down on one knee…)
I did, but it was just shy of tongue in cheek, more a nod to the expected norms. We had been living together for 4 years by then, and dated for another full year prior, and she was getting pressure from her folks and a little insecure about it. So we had already shopped for the rings together (IE not a surprise), but I did “randomly” take her out to a nice dinner and then proposed on one knee a bit away from the restaurant after we left.
So technically yes, with a lot of additional factors. This would have been 2000 or 2001 and we would have been 26-27 years old.
Somewhat less facetiously, I really don’t remember my proposal in any detail. She was sitting in a chair, I have no idea what I was doing. What I mainly remember was buying the engagement ring, because the guy at the jewelry store who called American Express for authorization handed the phone over to me, where Amex grilled me to confirm that I was the authorized cardholder.
When I was dating a suave Greek guy years ago he presented me with an antique platinum ring at one point in the relationship.
There was no bended knee involved that I recall.
I was 42 (properly divorced and annulled) and he was 47 at the time so we were well into middle age.
That said, I have never been aware of all the rituals involved in relationships and assumed it was some kind of friendship ring.
My friends at work educated me that this was quite an expensive bit of jewelry and maybe it was an engagement ring of some sort.
Well turns out it was.
Somehow I just didn’t pick up on it until I had a conversation with the guy to clarify.
But the ring was more of a symbolic harbinger of things to come.
The dam thing was too big so I had to get some kind of metal insert to make it fit properly.
Every time I took it off it scraped my skin to the point where my finger got infected, swelled, turned blue and I could not get the thing off.
I had to go the emergency room to have it cut off.
It was later resized professionally and I wore it for the duration of that relationship.
When it ended he demanded the ring back.
I had my attorney mail it to him with a letter to never contact me again.
I know I’ve shared this many times, but for those who somehow missed it: after our second date, having known each other 2 weeks, my husband told me I was going to marry him, including the disclaimer “it may be in a year or 10 years, but…” He didn’t get down on his knee, nor did he present a ring. We eloped 4 weeks after our first date. As of December 2025, it’s been 42 years.
I’m going to guess that a large fraction of Americans discuss getting married while sitting on the couch, eating dinner, or brushing their teeth. And they hash out those details. The formal proposal is sort of romantic theater that many couples go through afterwards.
My nephew proposed to his girlfriend last summer. It was a big public proposal, he did go down on a knee, and there was a photographer there to record it. My brother made a fuss about keeping it a secret in advance, which made my slightly anxious. (Public proposals just seem like a bad idea.) But after the event we all were swimming, and i was changing in the next booth over from the bride-to-be, and heard her telling her friend which parts of the event were actually a surprise to her. Let’s just say that the fact of the proposal itself wasn’t a surprise, and she had packed a nice dress for the event.
Yes, sometimes the man pops the question to a surprised woman. But i doubt that’s the norm, even for couples with formal proposals.
My sister-in-law and her family have lived in the US for about five years, so her 22 year old kids have had their late school and college years there, picking up local habits (and accent). One has announced that her boyfriend and her are ‘planning their engagement this year’, including holding a large party - which my sister has been told she needs to pay for - at which the boyfriend will make his formal proposal in front of a large audience. Now call me old fashioned but… WHAT?!
First I knew I was formally getting married was when my then-girlfriend went shopping and came back to tell me she’d nipped into the registry office and booked our wedding.*
*Yes, we had discussed getting married just not got engaged. We’re lesbians, so a formal engagement just felt a bit hetro-normal.
I wonder if these kind of formal proposals are more common for certain regions of America, or have become more common because of social media? Like I said, I don’t know of anyone who did this, but obviously people do.
There’s something that may have become more common due to social media but it’s not the simple “surprise proposal on one knee”. Judging by what I see, it’s now common to make the engagement an “event”. I’m not talking about having a party after the fact. I’m talking about a gathering of family and friends all there (perhaps after traveling to a vacation destination) to witness the “proposal” with a professional photographer. Proposal is in quotes because I do not see how that could be planned as a surprise to one of the couple and I’m one of those people who thinks you are engaged as soon as there is a an agreement to marry. ( Don’t even ask about the “pre-engagement rings” that were popular when I was in high school).
I do have that feeling that social media is playing strongly into that and we are seeing some sort of arms races.
" Johnny proposing to Gina on the knee and putting it up in social media" ups the ante for everybody in the same age bracket of their friends group I think. Add to that there’s also a lot of business and money to be made and suddenly you are into a perfect Halloween expanding worldwide scenario.
As you say that, I realize that prom proposal stunts are a thing now, too. It just a weird world where everything is almost a performative parody of reality.
Yeah, once again, in my profession, I’ve seen this. Most proposals I’ve done have been quiet affairs between just brides- and grooms-to-be, but I’ve had a number of “big family” type events that required a party planner and all that jazz. For my clients, this was especially popular among the well-to-do South Asian/Indian set. But my clients heavily draw from this pool. I’ve also had a number where it was private, but then the newly engaged would go meet up with their families in a nearby downtown restaurant and celebrate the engagement together.
I also once spontaneously happened upon a proposal. I was shooting engagement (not proposal) photographs on LaSalle here in Chicago when I saw a man going down on one knee from the corner of my eye. I whipped around, got photos of the moment, and sent it to the happy couple for free. It was a neat, unexpected moment. So it does happen without planned photographers around, too.
As someone who didn’t, it is a regret. Thirty years later, she was comparing notes with a friend and complaining. The traditional approach cannot go wrong. Stadiums are a definite clueless guy move.