The Marriage Proposal

What’s the per­fect roman­tic mar­riage proposal?

Should he get down on one knee in a restau­rant, the tra­di­tional way? Or pro­pose on Christ­mas day, on a trop­i­cal beach or at the top of the Lon­don Eye?*

*I know there are more exotic places for it, but I’m keep­ing to the whole Eng­lish Wed­ding theme here!

In my day job as a wed­ding cal­lig­ra­pher I’ve writ­ten four pro­pos­als, all poems.

The first was for a guy who lived in Eng­land while his girl­friend was over­seas – kind of a long dis­tance love let­ter / poem end­ing with “Will you marry me?” The sec­ond mar­riage pro­posal I was com­mis­sioned to write was for Christ­mas Day. It was to be the final present for my customer’s girl­friend on Christ­mas morn­ing. He’d writ­ten a poem called “The Gift” as his pro­posal. The third pro­posal scroll I wrote was part of a plan to pro­pose at a roman­tic picnic.

And the fourth — which I’ve writ­ten this week – is for a New Year’s Eve pro­posal. It’s a boxed scroll, with a poem writ­ten by my client for his girl­friend. He’s planned the whole evening with a roman­tic din­ner and danc­ing at a lux­ury hotel after­wards – I love it.

From my days fre­quent­ing wed­ding forums like Hitched and Wed­ding Chaos I know there are peak times of year for pro­pos­als: Valentine’s Day of course, fol­lowed by New Year’s Eve and Christ­mas Day. As well as pop­u­lar times for pro­pos­als, there are places: on hol­i­day is a clas­sic – choos­ing a mem­o­rable loca­tion is eas­ier if the Grand Canyon is on your itinerary!

I’d love to hear your expe­ri­ences. Is there pres­sure to pro­pose in a unique way? Does the set­ting mat­ter most, or the choice of words?

If guys who pro­pose go to great lengths, should girls who pro­pose go to the same extremes?

Share your pro­posal sto­ries by com­ment­ing on this post. Orig­i­nal, unusual, funny, excit­ing or sweet, charm­ing and roman­tic… I’d love to hear your story!

By Claire