Getting Engaged – Romantic Surprise or Planned Event?

Your engagement story sounds wonderful, but it’s a bit condescending and closed-minded to say that that’s “doing it right.” Is it so wrong for an engagement not to be a total surprise?

There’s a lot of value in engagements that aren’t a complete surprise. When it’s a complete surprise, the couple hasn’t talked about getting married. The man (who is presumably the one asking) is ready for marriage, but is the woman? Maybe, maybe not. She might say no (which has a tendency to ruin the relationship) or, even worse, she might say yes *and not be ready.* People can often get caught up in the surprise or emotion of the moment and say yes when they’re not really ready for it.

Talking about getting engaged beforehand allows the woman to say, “hey, I’m not ready for this.” This prevents the couple from winding up in an engagement / marriage that both aren’t ready for, or from a rejected proposal sabotaging an otherwise good relationship. Isn’t that a good thing?

My husband and I talked about engagement before he proposed, and I knew he was going to propose sometime in the next few months. We both knew that we were on the same page. When he proposed, it was still a huge surprise.

Maybe the right thing for your relationship was to ask without knowing what her answer would be, but this isn’t right for every relationship. Respect that.

We’d actually been talking about marriage for a few months. My birthday was coming up and he had mentioned that he wanted to get me a new knife set {we love cooking together and I needed one}. He waited until the night before my birthday to go shopping for my present. Since we’d talked about the knife set, I figured that’s what I was getting. Then he ruined the whole surprise by calling me to ask what my ring size was while he was out shopping! When he got home he just handed me the bag since he figured I knew what he’d got me! I technically never got the “will you marry me” question.

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It was a surprise for me. I blogged about it here: http://noregretsliving.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/a-year-ago-today/

I knew that my now-husband would propose, but I thought he would’ve waited a few months until after the holidays, so I wasn’t suspecting it. We had talked about marriage in general, but never had the “If I asked you to marry me, would you say yes?” conversation. That seems a little too ‘forced’/’safe’/what-have-you, but we both knew where we were headed.

We didn’t go ring shopping together – I had a family ring that I wanted to use, so he secured that from my mom when he asked her blessing to propose.

But planning an engagement has become more popular – men can even hire engagement planners to pull up a big surprise. I think this is becoming more popular because of things like pinterest and youtube and because, for more and more couples, actually getting engaged isn’t a surprise, so the only surprise left is how he actually asks. Just the world we live in, I guess. http://noregretsliving.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/planning-your-engagement/

Now that’s pretty romantic. Something that I lack.

I asked my wife to marry me by asking if she thought we were going to get married, while sitting on her couch. She said she thought so, so I told her to pick from a set of dates.

While that’s the official way it happened, I also took her on a sleigh ride in February and got down on one knee while the driver got out to “check” the conditions of the snow up ahead.

We went to a Charity Ball with two other couples (who were in on it). While we were dancing to one of my favorite songs he talked about our relationship. Then he spun me around and got down on one knee, I actually though that he FELL! That is how surprised I was. Everyone else was screaming, laughing and taking pictures. He even had to ask me twice because I was in such shock. I had it in my mind he would ask me after the holidays, this was early November. It was great because there was a photographer there; we got some really great pictures. This was a wonderful night and special because he is an introvert and I am an extrovert, this was so unexpected of him. He knew that I would love it AND not expect it from him. He also designed the ring himself!

We were living in different places and only seeing each other at weekends. We went out for a drink one night and he asked me. I wasn’t expecting a proposal but I wasn’t totally surprised. I loved him. I said yes. Then we went shopping for a ring the next day and chose one together. I wouldn’t have liked a very public proposal with him down on bended knee in front of an interested audience, or having to pretend I liked the ring he chose and having to wear it for a lifetime. I suppose love is recognizing what your other half would like and making it happen like that! Worked for us – we’ve been married 25 years.

Ours was totally a surprise! Not that it I wasn’t hoping, praying and waiting!!
We are 22 and 23, in college… we’d never looked at rings together but had talked about our future since the moment we started dating. We went on a weekend getaway, the first we’d ever been on, to a small bed and breakfast in Kimswick. We visited all the quaint town places. He gave me a present, a book (I love to read…). It is called “Love Across the Ages’, inside he’d cut a heart where the ring was, and beautiful sentimental words were written. And I love that it sits on our book shelf. He got down on one knee and asked, of course I said YES!! Later he shared that when he asked my dad for my hand, he asked him if he had a plan for if I said no. When we called to tell the families that we were engaged, my dad was the only one to ask, what did you say?