Few people get to spend their workdays watching heartfelt proposal videos all day, and I count myself lucky to be one of them. As the Senior Editor of HuffPost Weddings, I also read tons of meet-cute stories, attend bridal fashion shows and scroll through hundreds of gorgeous wedding photos. It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it.
When I first started doing this job two years ago, every flash mob, Jumbotron and writing-in-the-sky marriage proposal could bring me to tears. This is the best proposal ever, I thought again and again. How perfectly suited this Bruno Mars song is to marriage proposals! We featured flash mob after flash mob after flash mob. We -- and our audience -- couldn't get enough.
Now, as Associate Editor Kelsey Borresen and I joke, it takes a lot to impress us. Run-of-the-mill flash mobs usually result in eye rolls. And don't even get me started on the latest wave of fake arrest marriage proposals (who wants to be scared to death before one of the happiest moments of your life? No one).
When a staff writer from another department pitches a proposal video, they'll often tell me it's the "best marriage proposal ever." Their copy exudes a lovely naiveté, the writing filled with over-the-top adjectives and pronouncements. I'm not really a fan of calling anything "the best ever." Certainly there is something out there that is even bigger, better, more meaningful and over the top. Why put all our eggs in one Tiffany blue box -- err, basket?
But after my boyfriend of 10 years (hey, I edit HuffPost Divorce too) popped the question recently, it became clear that, in fact, my proposal was the best proposal. He did it in a completely surprising way -- on a Friday morning before I had left for the office, during a routine workday task. It was the last story idea in Kelsey's morning pitch e-mail: High school sweetheart proposes to long-time girlfriend. I clicked and found out that the proposal was mine.
What followed (after the initial crying, tackling him to the floor and calling everyone I know) was a full day of surprises including lunch at our first date spot, dinner with our families (with a surprise visit from my sister, who flew in from Arizona), and a surprise party at my parents' house with all my closest friends. It was perfect. And everyone I told about my proposal agreed.
In the week after we got engaged, I joked with colleagues that I was going to write a story called "10 Signs My Marriage Proposal Was The Best Proposal Ever" (that, or "Proof That My Marriage Proposal Was The Best Proposal"). What I realized in recounting the story again and again was that my proposal was the best proposal because it was just that -- my proposal. My boyfriend -- err, fiancé (still getting used to that!) -- could have asked me to marry him in any number of ways and all of those ways would have been perfect because he is the perfect person for me, and me for him.
So go ahead -- plan an elaborate flash mob, a scavenger hunt or simply roll over in bed and say, "Hey, wanna make this official?" Your marriage proposal will be the best proposal ever because it's yours. And I promise, no more eye-rolling from me.
Cheesing big time after the best marriage proposal ever.
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