Palisade combed the world for some great proposal stories. Here’s a sampling.
Misti and Lance Baldo
Lance had planned a trip to Italy, where his grandmother lived, around the time of my birthday. We had the most amazing time. One of the many cities we visited was Venice. We stayed at the Boscolo Luxury Hotel Dei Dogi. I should have known something was up by the caliber of the hotel suite we were in. We took a walk in this beautiful garden of trails in a courtyard behind the hotel that led out to the Adriatic. On the way back from our lovely walk, we stopped at a bench to take in the views of the garden. There were lit marble statues and caves; everything was so well-manicured and perfect. At that time, he got down on one knee in front of me and presented me with the most amazing ring, shaking like a leaf and asked, “Will you marry me?” I was stunned and truly wasn’t expecting this and immediately said, “Yes! I would love to marry you.”
Fast forward three years, and our wedding was just as thought out and planned as his proposal. We got married at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, and it was the grandest day ever! I still watch the video with a broad smile and tears in my eyes. My husband is my best friend; he completes me. He is my love, my life, always.
Amy Bryant and Bruno Blumenfeld
This was more than 10 years ago. It was July, and we went out to dinner somewhere near Columbus Circle—we were actually taking dance lessons nearby, a gift from Bruno’s mother—and if I’m remembering correctly there were martinis involved, so that explains a lot right there. We were definitely drunk on something. Anyway, after dinner we went into Central Park, and we stretched out on the grass and looked up at the lights from all the buildings that surround the park.
I remember I was thinking about how Bruno grew up near Central Park and how Central Park really must feel like home to him, and then I was thinking about how he was raised by his father nearby, and how it was sad that his father died when Bruno was 19 and how much he must miss him, and then I was thinking about how I wanted to keep being a part of Bruno’s life, and so then I asked him if he would marry me. I remember I whispered it, probably because the words were terrifying to utter.
And Bruno said, “Yes,” and then he said that he knew just the place where we should celebrate, and he took me to this hotel he’s always liked (the Warwick), and we sat in the lobby and drank champagne, and we called our friends Chris and Elizabeth who lived nearby and had gotten engaged a few months earlier, and they came over and joined us, and then Bruno and I decided that we should call our parents (this is pre-cell-phone), so we made separate trips to the hotel pay phone. Our poor parents—we must have been slurring.
Of course I woke up in a dead panic the next morning. I was very freaked out about the idea of getting married, and meanwhile members of our family kept calling to congratulate us and ask about dates and locations and such. So we kind of tuned everything out as much as we could and didn’t talk about it much, and didn’t really start telling our friends for a few months. But eventually we got used to the idea, and we got married in Las Vegas the following April. We didn’t send invitations so a hodgepodge of people turned up, but we had a lot of fun and I really loved my dress. And the dance lessons came in handy at the reception.
Laura Lambert and Bayard Jones
I absolutely knew it was going to happen. We had been together for seven years, so I was definitely saying, “Yes.” He had started to propose before, over Thanksgiving, but I told him it was the wrong place and time. (We were on vacation with both our families—it just seemed weird, more for them than for us.) So we made these elaborately romantic plans for Christmas in Vermont, just the two of us. My memory is a little hazy. We were having dinner and I think he brought out the ring, I grabbed it, and promptly dropped it. It was his grandmother’s old Tiffany ring, really lovely, really big rock, should have been hard to lose! We tried to be subtle about crawling around, but the woman serving our meal asked later, “Did you find it?” I can’t remember if anyone else was watching, really, because the champagne and the intensity of the moment made me focus almost solely on Bayard and the square foot of carpeting right in front of me.
Alicia and James Lewis
The engagement took place in the midst of a snowstorm during a horse-drawn sleigh ride in West Dover, Vermont, after we met on eHarmony a year and a half earlier. The morning of The Big Question, one of the horses went lame and the ride was temporarily cancelled. We were spending the weekend at the Deerhill Inn and the owner luckily located a backup horse and the ride went ahead as secretly scheduled. The sleigh driver knew of the secret proposal plan and had a camera tucked into her pocket ready to snap Alicia’s reaction. We both jumped into two feet of fresh snow to take a “Winter Wonderland photo,” when I bent down on one knee and popped the question. Completely surprised, Alicia was overjoyed and said, “YES!” When we returned to the inn, everyone was waiting to see the ring and hear the details of our special sleigh ride. Originally from Hoboken, we now live in Metuchen. We plan on celebrating our anniversary where it all started, at the inn in Vermont. And we are hoping to be there in the middle of another wonderful snowstorm.
Cristina Mejias and Lucas Frank
It was a beautiful day in October. A picture-perfect day for what I’ve wanted to do forever but kept putting off—skydive. Lucas called the place and set it up. I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to do this.
I felt apprehensive. I wasn’t sure if I was really ready to jump out of a perfectly good plane. But he convinced me to do it. He had already gone a few times and assured me that I could do this.
We arrived at Skydive Jersey Shore and got suited up. Lucas said that he wanted to jump first so that he could take pictures of me coming down. I didn’t think anything of it. Of course we would want pictures of this.
Little did I know that the real reason he wanted to come down first was so that he could set up for the most romantic and most unusual proposal ever.
As I fell closer to the ground, my skydiving instructor asked me if it was my birthday. “What?” I said. “No.” He then asked, “So, then what is that sign all about?” I struggled to read the sign from nearly 100 feet in the air. As I approached the ground, I could see Lucas down on one knee. His brother, sister, and a few of our friends held a 15-foot sign that said, “Cristina, Will You Marry Me?” There were about 50 people from the skydiving place smiling and clapping.
I burst into tears. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I mean, as if jumping from a plane weren’t enough to get my adrenaline pumping.
My skydiving instructor landed me right in front of Lucas. He asked, “Will you marry me?” I immediately said, “Yes.” The instructor detached himself from me at this point to give us our moment. It was the most perfect proposal ever.
Elena and Lou Selmi
I met Lou in a bar and he proposed in a bar. I had a couple of drinks before he asked, and began crying. The bartender said, “If you two are going to fight you should take it outside.” When we told him what was going on he bought us a round.