Modern Love: The Marriage Proposal

There is a recognised split second of silence that falls at a dinner table when someone asks (innocently enough) “so how did he propose?” only to be met with a gentle correction. “Actually, she proposed. Over breakfast. With a croissant.”  There’s a beat. A smile. And then the rupture of celebratory joy as the table adjusts themselves around this new and happy information.

Because what we may not realise as we are leaping through life, is a shake up of one of love’s oldest rituals. The question of who will ask first has become, itself, a question. And for a generation raised on tradition but living in a modern world, the answer is no longer as black and white as it once was.

I Do

Let us begin where most engagements traditionally begin: with him. On one knee, in possession of a ring selected under considerable pressure, possibly sweating lightly, rehearsing a few choice words that will be immediately forgotten the moment she says yes. There is something genuine about this traditional ritual. It has weight. It has theatre. It has the approval of every romantic film ever made and, crucially, of most mothers-in-law.

And yet. Even within this most traditional of formats, things have opened up. He may have asked her family first or less traditionally, we may not have. He may have asked her friends, to check the ring size and gauge the general temperature. He may have spent six months in a coded WhatsApp chat coordinating with her sister. The proposal is still his, technically, but not exclusively. 

What has not changed is the expectation, still held by the majority of women, and an equally significant number of families – that the asking is very much still his to do.

You Do

She proposed. Amazing. If we are living in a modern world, then it’s about time. If we are being frank, the idea that only one half of a couple has the emotional authority to formalise a love that belongs to both of them has always been a little odd. 

Women have been proposing for longer than anyone has been writing about it. The difference now is that they’re talking about it. Posting about it. Celebrating it – as they should. And yet, even among the most progressive of couples, there is still a moment of pause. 

What strikes us, in our work, is how often the woman who proposed is described by guests as “amazing” and “so her”. As if the act of proposing is still surprising enough to require a personality adjective to justify it. As a society we are getting there. But we are not there. Yet.

We Do

And then there is the mutual proposal. The couple who simply decided, together, somewhere between a holiday and a conversation about where they’d like to live, that they were getting married. No ring. No knee. No audience of strangers in a restaurant who will applaud and then immediately return to their sea bass. Just two people who looked at each other one Tuesday and said: shall we, then?

This is, in many ways, the most practical and has almost zero pressure on either one or the other. But it is also the one most likely to produce a slightly unsatisfying answer to “how did you get engaged?” — a question that, despite everything, people still want to have a narrative for. A story they can tell. A moment, which despite all the years prior of love and commitment, they can point to as the start of their married life. 

The ritual, it turns out, matters even when you’ve dispensed with it.

They Do

Same-sex couples have been disrupting the conventions of marriage proposals for longer than anyone else, largely because they had to. When the script doesn’t apply to you, you write a new one. And in doing so, they have given the rest of us permission to ask a question that turns out to be rather liberating: what does this moment actually mean to us, specifically?

Some choose ceremony, rings exchanged, prepared in secret. Some choose spontaneity. Some choose a conversation, plain and serious, because they that suits them and they would rather talk honestly than perform publicly. Such variety is a relief and an opportunity. It suggests that what matters is not the format but the intention inside it.

This is what we are slowly learning. The proposal is not the theatre. The proposal is the decision — the genuine, considered, slightly terrifying decision that this person is the one you are choosing, hopefully forever and if you’ve done some good reflecting, you think they’d choose you back. Everything else is just staging.

So. Who should ask?

The person who most wants to. Or the person who has been waiting longest to. Or the person who found the ring and simply couldn’t wait. Or both of you after an impromptu conversation in the kitchen. The conventions around proposals have not disappeared — they have softened into options. And options, unlike rules, allow for the thing that every truly great wedding is built on: a story that is yours.

What we will say, having spent years in rooms with couples at the very beginning of their engagement, is this: the best proposals — whatever their shape — have one thing in common. They are unambiguous. They are said out loud. They are not inferred from a holiday booking or deduced from a ring that appeared on the kitchen counter. They are spoken, to another person, with the knowledge that the answer might be complicated and the courage to ask anyway.

That, whatever the gender politics, whatever the format, whatever the croissant situation — is what makes a proposal a proposal. The rest is detail. And detail, happily, is what we’re rather good at.

Planning something? We would love to hear your story — however it began.