Wedding Proposal Tips For Boys And Girls

VALENTINE’S day is fast approaching and, for some couples, will be bringing with it an air of anticipation.

The annual celebration of consumerism, love and affection was originally named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine.

Forget about emasculating your man, if he won’t do it then get down on one knee and do it for him.

However, by 1969 Pope Paul VI had deleted it from the General Roman Calendar of saints, and now February 14 is reserved solely for free spending intimate companions.

It is thought that nearly 65 per cent of all wedding proposals happen on Valentines Day, with the date improving the likelihood of a positive response from 50 per cent to nearly 75 per cent*.

2012 is no ordinary Valentine's Day

But 2012 is no ordinary Valentines Day. As it’s a leap year, women are entitled to use February 14’s power to propose just as much as men, meaning there could be twice the amount of potential proposers out there next month.

But how do you make your proposal fresh and exciting? You can’t just go to a restaurant, take out a ring and ask the question anymore, can you? Not if you want to, at the very least, get a reasonable anecdote out of it.

Fortunately, I’ve come up with a couple of ideas to make your proposal as special as a selection of Forever Friends Valentines Day merchandise.

Boys, here’s what you do:

Spell It Out For Her

You can go as simple or as ambitious as you like with the ‘marry me’ message. I’ve heard everything from farmers ploughing their fields with the message then taking a helicopter ride overhead, to simply writing it out in the sand at the beach.

I’ve even seen a ‘will you marry me’ tattoo (that’s too far, don’t do that), but the key here is to make sure your message registers as a personalised marriage proposal instantly.

Spell it out for her

The last thing you need after abseiling over a motorway bridge in the middle of the night painting ‘will you marry me’ in huge letters is for your girlfriend to whizz underneath it at 70mph on her way to work, wondering why she’s never noticed it before.

Write it on the bathroom mirror in lipstick, or if you work in the ITV subtitling department, change Tina’s lines during an episode of Coronation Street. So long as you are creative, this classic proposal can be a real winner.

Doing the viral rounds of late is the Lego proposal put together by movie maker Walt Thompson. You won’t beat it but you can certainly enjoy it…

The Elaborate Stunt

For the real adrenaline junkies, there’s the elaborate stunt approach. These can range from proposing just before skydiving, to fake-falling off a building into a hidden crash mat before revealing the message.

I stumbled across this on Gumtree the other day. It’s an elaborate proposal in the making, attempting to create something similar to the popular T-Mobile advert at Liverpool Street Station that was a viral hit in 2009.

You’ve got to admire the ambition, but this approach to marriage proposals may leave your partner pondering whether you went to all this effort so you’d have your own story to tell, rather than to secure the answer you were looking for.

The elaborate approach requires plenty of planning, but pull it off in style, and you’ll have a moment worth remembering.

The Social Network Risk Factor

It was once the case, that if you wanted to ask your girlfriend to marry you in front of millions at the risk of inescapable humiliation, you could just ask her during half time of a televised football match. Well it’s time to get contemporary, because you can achieve the same thrills from your big question moment without any of the risks.

The Social Network Proposal

Why not ask the love of your life to marry you via a carefully tagged Facebook status update? Your bride-to-be can reply in the comments box below, followed by the inevitable floods of congratulatory poems and ‘likes’.

Plus, if you’re under 25, chances are you met this girl on Facebook anyway, so it’ll be quite fitting. And if she says no, pretend it was frape. Those cheeky lads hey, what are they like?

Girls, here’s what you do:

Be A Man About It

It’s important not to get hung up on the tradition that proposing is a man’s job.

If you are the more dominant one in the relationship, and you’re used to setting the pace, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be the one proposing.

Sure, you could pressure him into it, but is that going to be the fairytale you’ve always dreamed of? Is it really that much of a special moment when it’s as predictable as a Paddy McGuiness punch line? You can convince yourself it was perfect, but it won’t have been.

Forget about emasculating your man, if he won’t do it then get down on one knee and do it for him. Make sure you do it soon though, or you’ll have to wait another four years for St Valentine’s blessing.

Be A Man About It

The Podcast Proposal

Can’t get your man away from his weekly feast of podcast pleasure? Why not use it to your advantage with a surprise proposal?

Unlike the radio phone-in, this approach comes without the risk that your loved one will miss the message and doesn’t require any give away nudges. 

‘Hey, make sure you’re listening to XFM at 10am’ is only going to raise eyebrows, but once you know your boyfriends listening habits (and if you don’t, should you really be thinking about a wedding proposal already? Think about it) then a heartfelt email and a kindhearted host are the only ingredients you’ll need for the surprise of his life.

The American Fairytale

Picture this. It’s 11am on a wet Sunday morning. The scene is a large public park with several muddy sports pitches. Groups of men, ranging widely in expanse and stench populate the area. One of them, the handsome one (hopefully), is banging his sodden boots against the exterior wall of a public toilet.

He glances across what initially looks like a bleak picture, but in the distance he sees something juxtaposed with the muddy greens and browns of the landscape. It’s fourteen American cheerleaders dressed in red, white and blue mini-skirts, complete with long socks and pom-poms.

Propose With Cheerleaders

His teammates/colleagues/friends gather, as the cheerleaders get closer. He soon realises they are heading, uncompromisingly, in his direction.

The cheer begins, it’s been well rehearsed, and culminates in each of the fourteen cheerleaders revealing a letter. Give me a W-I-L-L, Y-O-U, M-A-R-R-Y, M-E.

A fifteenth appears, displaying a question mark, for clarity more than anything.

He looks stunned, but thrilled, and plants a huge kiss on a cheerleader of his choice (hopefully that’s you) as the others look on with envious glares.

The figurative knot is to be tied at a non-specific future date as a result of the non-contractually binding verbal agreement.

Who says romance is dead?

*Evidence based on no scientific, social or academic research whatsoever, and should not be taken as anything other than fictional.

Follow David on Twitter @DavidPMcCourt