Women propose?
I thought they just started hinting…more and more heavily as time goes on…
Without offering TMI, I finished what I was doing, looked up, he said “so what do you want to do with the rest of the day?” I said “I don’t know. You want to go get married?” He said “Sure, sounds like fun”, so we took a shower, headed up the coast to my hometown, got a license, and were married by 5:30 that evening. Went to dinner, picked out nice plain rings, and told our friends and families over the next few weeks. No drama, no trauma, celebrated our twentieth anniversary this last year.
We had been dating about a year and a half, and living together for 3 days.
My wife, who was definitely the aggressor in our relationship, proposed to me because, as she later confessed, one of her friends was “sniffing around me.” I knew the friend, and it was true. 
Oh, to be young and irresistible again. 
I asked him rather casually, “Hey, wanna get married? Like, now?” He said okay, and we were married a week later.
Yup. We’d been living together as a couple for 11 years at that point. Every time the subject of marriage came up, he’d shy away. His parents have both been married (and his mother divorced) three times and he has a slew of wide-spread half-siblings, so understandably, he was of the opinion that marriage wasn’t something that actually mattered. My parents have been married for over 40 years, so I’m on the other end of the spectrum (despite a very tiny marriage when I was 19 which last 6 horribly abusive months and ended with the deaths of my pets - I don’t think that counts :P)
Anyway, I finally just laid it down - if he wasn’t sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, we were both wasting our time. I gave him a ring and he took our dog Jilly for a long walk in a local wooded park. I don’t know what the two of them talked about, but he came back wearing the ring. One more reason I loved that dog.
Yep.
We had known each other about a year, been together about 9 months, living together 8.5 months. I knew from the first week we were together I was gonna marry him, and had dropped some subtle hints that he should get asking, and 2 rather major un-subtle hints at that point.
We worked at the same place and took our lunches together, and on that day one of us was taking a lunch from work and the other had come from his or her day off to spend lunch together. (I can’t remember which of us was working, honestly.) We were just taking a little walk around a nearby building when I blurted out “Hey, do you want to get married?” He said “Sure!” and then “Oh shit, I wanted to ask your dad first, and do it right!”
I remembered that my parents were coming to town that night (I swears my proposal had nothing to do with that) and reminded him of that, saying I could take a potty break and he could ask my dad. We did exactly that, and when I came back to the table he basically just proposed to me the same way I proposed to him: “Hey, wanna get married?” Dad got a bottle of Dom for the four of us, which was delicious, and sits up on a shelf next to an empty bottle of our wedding champagne.
We’ve been married 6 years now and are expecting our first spawn ANY MOMENT NOW.
Wow, I was going to ask this question too. I didn’t know women proposing would be so common.
Not me, a friend.
He’s one of those guys who had never expected to get married, because he simply didn’t see himself as “marriageable”: ok for flings yes, but not lifetime material. He did meet a woman who considered him very much long term material, but who also didn’t much believe in paperwork. They moved in together. His grandmother, who’d had Alzheimer’s for years at that point, would sometimes say “it’s a pity I can’t remember your wedding, it must have been great!” - she wasn’t the only one who looked at them and saw the comfort of a married couple, rather than the walking-on-eggshells of two people who aren’t completely commited to each other yet. Shortly after Granny died, they were in bed, the subject of maybe ditching Lt Condom and his cohorts came up, and she pointed out “well, if we decide that we will make a baby, we should get married, it makes the paperwork simpler.”
So, they did, and they took the bouquet to Granny’s grave.
I did! The now-Mr Judith was griping about how much it was going cost to renew his impending work visa, which turned into a full-on rant about the long-term costs of UK immigration. As I listened to him talk about his long-term future plans with the absolute assumption that we would be together for all of it, I realised I’d been making the same assumption basically since we got together. So I pointed out it costs much less and is much faster to immigrate to the UK by getting married. We had only been going out for a few months, so we hadn’t yet thought of it as something to have a conversation about, but it was abundantly clear to both of us it was where our relationship was heading.
We’d known each other online for 9 years, had been in love for almost 7, and had met in person twice, when I told him to let me know if he ever wanted to be with me forever. Soon thereafter, I scheduled a trip to see him in person for the third time, to make sure we were compatible enough in a face-to-face environment. During that trip, we went to a Doctor Who exhibition at a local museum. They had a Dalek you could get inside and speak in its voice, and I got in it and asked “Will you marry me?” in a Dalek voice. 
We’re such geeks.
I kind of did; I know it was more important to me early on and it was something that, through discussion, I told him I expected to happen eventually, and he agreed to “one day” marry me. We were only 19 when we met, so while we talked about it for years there was a sense that we were too young to really go through with it anyways (we were mostly independent from our parents and living together, but both in university and on a very tight budget). Eventually we came to the understanding that yes, it would happen, but when he was ready.
In the end, he proposed formally when we were both 23 and we got married a year later. We just celebrated 6 years married this past weekend!
I also asked him out in the first place. He said no.
Clearly, he changed his mind a few weeks later!
I’m so swiping that line!
And I got proposed to, once. I accepted, but… Well, it didn’t stick. All for the best in hindsight.
Yes. And no.
We’d been dating for maybe six or eight weeks when he started talking about getting married (he told me much later that he knew after one date that he wanted to marry me). I was really not ready to talk about it, and I said, flat-out, “You are freaking me out. Do not talk about getting married anymore. At all. Ever.” And he said, “Um, okay. How about if you tell me when I can, and I’ll be quiet till then.” I agreed to that, and he held up his end of the bargain. Not a word. (About marriage. Obviously he spoke about other things.)
It only took me two months to come around. We were having steaks one night and I said, “That thing you’re not allowed to talk about? You may speak.” We picked out a ring the next day.
So it wasn’t my idea first, but I was the one who ultimately got the ball rolling.
Sort of.
A while ago, Taco Bell started printing cutesy little slogans on their sauce packets. Sort of the Tex-Mex version of Valentine’s hearts, I guess. Anyway, one night I left one on the coffee table that had “Will You Marry Me?” printed on it. When I got up in the morning, I found, in his careful and meticulous writing, “Of course!” sharpied underneath.
I still have the packet. Our 1st anniversary was a couple of days ago. 
I’m wearing the jewelry he gave me, including a necklace of lacquered paper beads. (1st year = Paper.)
Background: together a decade this summer. We shacked up forever because, frankly, marriage as a formality meant nothing to us. We started talking seriously about it because of insurane and tax purposes - ooooh, romantic! No rings, though - we’re flat broke, although I’d like to get us each a stainless band at some point. (We missed getting them for our 10-year “together” anniv. and our 1-year “married” anniv. Maybe this Christmas?) He did, however, re-set a ring for me with a small piece of the same cherry wood he used to make that coffee table. Silver and wood - I love the combo.
That sounds nice. Parkhead and I don’t have rings yet, but someday I hope to be able to get something symbolic for us to wear. I don’t want anything fancy, but it sucks not having anything.