"Will You Marry Me?" Proposal Stories to Inspire

Just in case you're still hesitant about asking your sweetie to marry you, here are some stories that should inspire you. I asked my married (and formerly married) friends how they proposed, and this is what they had to say:

My friend Ken tells it like this: "We were in college. It was a hot summer day. Sultry. We were lying on her bed listening to Joan Baez's Ballad Book album. The song "Jackaroe" came on, and the final verse ends with:

This couple they got married,

So well did they agree.

This couple they got married,

So why not you and me?

Why not you and me?

So I turned to her and said, "So why not you and me?"

The rest was history."

Here's Max and Nita's story, as told by Max: "My wife and I had gone to Chicago for a convention. We were staying at her uncle's house in West Chicago. They had been giving us grief prior to coming bout the fact that they really wanted to see a ring on her finger.

The night we arrived in Chicago I secretly tucked the ring box in my pocket. We had gone into the family room to watch TV with her aunt and uncle. I made the excuse that I needed to go to the bathroom, and at the same time called my wife's service dog, Zinny over to me. In the bathroom I gingerly wrapped the box in paper towels and had Zinny take the box from me and hold it in her mouth. I then leaned down and told Zinny to go see Mom. ‘Course, when my wife saw that Zinny had something in her mouth she asked her to give it to her. As Zinny was the ever dutiful service dog, she complied. There was that moment of silence, and then I took the box and opened it and asked her to marry me."

My brother Kent is married to my brother-in-law Brian, and they've recently proposed to a third, my brother-in-law-to-be, Michael. Kent generously shared both proposal stories with me. I remember the first one, because I was living in the same house with Kent at the time, and the second one is even sweeter!

"I was visiting Brian, when he still lived in Toronto, and I was in DC. We'd both sworn in the past, before we even met, that neither of us would ever do the "wedding" or the ring thing because they just didn't appeal. We were wandering around town one morning, seeing a few sights, window shopping and running a few errands. We stopped for lunch somewhere, and over the menus he asked, "So what do you want to do this afternoon?" I replied, "Well, we could go ring shopping." And that's what we did. He moved down about six months later."

And, I should add, six months after that, I co-officiated at the wedding of these two anti-wedding individuals - tuxedos, wedding cake, harpist, the works! But I should let Kent continue. After all, he still had one more proposal about ten years in his future!

"Years go by, and we met a sweet guy named Michael. By this time Brian had been in DC for pushing 10 years, and Michael lived in Cleveland. We'd met in the spring and seen each other a few times over the summer, and all of us knew we really liked being together. He was on his way to being out of a messy long-term relationship, abut still had a ways to go, so we tried to give him support and space at the same time, a difficult balancing act when you care about someone.

"Michael hadn't been taking very good care of himself for a while. Plenty of exercise, but he'd been losing a lot of weight. We saw him at a square dancing weekend in early November, and he was thinner than seemed healthy - and yet he wasn't eating. He hadn't eaten for days, and just didn't feel like it. But he drank lots of coffee - I think it was the cream that kept him going. It was obvious that he was depressed and/or upset b out something, but we couldn't draw it out of him with lots of people around, so we just tried to be supportive. We managed to get him to agree to meet after all the dancing on Saturday night to talk about whatever was bothering him.

"The three of us sat at a secluded table in what passed for the hotel bar. We managed to draw Michael out - he was angry and upset about his break-up, which was still experiencing fallout, but it seemed like there was more, that something else was causing the depression. Then Brian asked him where he saw himself in five years, or where he wanted to be. Michael seemed scared, and asked us if we really wanted to know the truth (actually, we both knew what was coming). He told us he saw himself living in the DC area - with us. Or at least that's where he wanted to be. By this time Brian and I were each holding a hand. Without even consulting each other, Brian said, "Will you marry us?", and all I could do was nod approval. There were a lot of tears, a lot of laughter, and a lot of hugging.

"And Michael ate a large, healthy breakfast in the morning."

Michael, of course, had to add his two cents' worth to this hub: "I NEVER SERIOUSLY considered this as a possibility. Okay, maybe in my wildest dreams, but not in reality. A threesome???? NO way! I knew I was in love with them, but I also knew, or thought I knew, that there was no way they were open to the possibility of a threesome, so I had resigned myself to be an admirer, a good friend. But when I looked at their faces and saw their hands and realized they were serious - really serious - all I could do was start to get teary-eyed and say yes. I reached out my hands to theirs and we had our first of many group hugs. By the way, this is my third proposal, but the first time I've been on the receiving end. Once I allowed myself to accept the reality of the possibility, it was wonderful and still is."

So what are you waiting for? Go out there and ask the love of your life to marry you!