Being a singer/songwriter, I decided that I wanted to write a song for my bride-to-be Vicky and propose to her in public. Her favorite restaurant has a stage where bands play every weekend, so I contacted a couple of bands to see if they would let me propose via song on-stage during one of their breaks. The band and the restaurant both agreed, so a few weeks before the date I told my fiancée that my office was having a drawing for a $50 gift certificate to the restaurant. She was very excited, but of course I downplayed it saying, “Oh, you know there’s no way I’ll win though.” The proposal was scheduled to be on a Friday, so on that Monday I reminded her about the drawing, and then Tuesday told her, “You’re not going to believe this, but I won! Do you want to go this Friday?” She didn’t suspect a thing.

We arrived at the restaurant and were seated directly in front of the stage which turned out to be very loud. She was quite upset that “this is the only place they can find to seat us” because the loud music was giving her a headache, but I convinced her to stay for just a few more minutes, and then at the last song before the band took their break excused myself to the restroom. A waiter from the restaurant grabbed my previously-stashed guitar from the office, and I nervously tuned my instrument in the men’s room while waiting for the break. As soon as I began walking towards the stage my fiancée spotted me and her jaw dropped and she began desperately holding back tears as I played the song I wrote just for her in front of a packed house. As my song ended with “will you marry me”, I climbed from the stage and dropped to one knee and handed her the ring. The audience burst into applause and one guy in the back yelled, “What’d she say?” to which I held up her newly-ringed finger.

- Chris B., Richmond, Virginia

I’m not saying that I know any more about love and marriage than anyone else. However, when someone asks me what my greatest idea was, only one comes to mind – my family.

It all started when I was trying to get votes. Not for myself, but for Atlanta mayoral candidate Maynard Jackson. My firm had been hired to help him win the election.

Maynard Jackson’s campaign for mayor of Atlanta was a victory, too. The new mayor was incredibly gracious and thankful. He said to me, “Should I ever be able to help you, just let me know.”

Now it was time to propose, so I called him. And I also called the Japanese firm that owned Atlanta’s tallest building, the IBM tower. And I called CBS, and I called the caterers, and I called in three producers from my agency.

Just before the six o’clock news, Cynthia received a message from her news director that a white-collar drug bust was about to go down in the penthouse of the IBM tower in midtown Atlanta. The police chief had been told to give Cynthia Good the exclusive story. The news director told her it would be the lead story, live, and that she should hightail it down to the tower to get the story.

Leading two camera trucks, Cynthia Good raced to the intersection of Peachtree and 14th Street where she witnessed some twenty police cars surrounding the building, a SWAT team and a fire truck (I couldn’t swing the chopper).

Cynthia demanded to be let into the building. She was told, “Sorry, ma’am, no one goes in. This is a very dangerous situation.” But Cynthia persevered and finally prevailed. Except for one last catch: a Red Dog SWAT team would have to escort her to the fiftieth floor, which it did. Once there, they broke down the door.

Behind it, she found not a Columbian drug cartel, but a knight of sorts – me – and dinner, champagne and musicians playing as the sun sank behind the picture windows, and I sank to my knees. She sank, too. And we’ve been afloat for 17 beautiful years!

- Joey R., Atlanta, Georgia

Throughout our 3 years of dating, my fiancée would always talk about her favorite movie “Anne of Green Gables.”  There is a particular scene in the movie where the girl, Anne, and the guy, Gilbert, confess their love for one another on their favorite spot, the old wooden bridge.  As I was thinking about how I should propose, I decided to research this old bridge.  Most the movie series of Anne of Green Gables was filmed in Prince Edward Island in Canada.  Although after researching more I discovered that the bridge was actually located right outside of Toronto.  So it happened that she, my fiancée now, happened to be traveling to that area for a research project in Dec.  So I decided to make a trip out of it.  I called up two best friends of ours who happened to be dating at the time and ask them to come along and take pictures from a distance and film the event.  We all met in Niagara Falls then took a day trip up to Toronto for the day.  We bypassed Toronto secretly and ended up in the small town of Gormley where the bridge was located.  We slowly drove down the old highway and suddenly there it was the old bridge off of the road into the woods.  I pulled over, all of us got out of the car and begin our walk to the bridge.  As we were walking to bridge, she begins to notice that is was exact bridge from the movie. We made our a way to center of the bridge.  I explain to her how much I love her, quoted her favorite line the movie, and then drop down on one knee pulled out the ring and ask her to marry me.  The entire event was a success and we are getting married on June 21st.

- John V., Washington, D.C.

I met my husband, Dustin, during an exchange year I did, where I spent a year at Washington State, from Wales.  I am a marine biologist, and on my last weekend in the states, before I went back to the UK, he had a going away surprise for me.  Little did I know that he had picked out a ring, and diamond and had it all planned!

He took me whale watching out in the Puget Sound from Anacortes, and I thought that the highlight of my day would be seeing all three of the resident pods of orcas converging - there must have been over 25 whales, the weather was awesome, and I think I even said “I don’t think this day could get any better” which is when he pulled a box out of his pocket and proposed!  I was so excited and surprised, I said yes and called my parents - totally forgetting it was 3am their time!  They were happy, albeit sleepy!  It was a magical day, surpassed only by our wedding day.  He did well!

- Chez C., Richland, Washington

I knew my wife for over three years and didn’t date her once.  We had met in Japan when I was living there. She lived in Japan and I in Utah.  After a trip to Japan we both had feelings but did nothing about it. After returning to Utah I called her to start dating.  We dated over the phone for eight days when I asked her to marry me, but I asked her in the Japanese traditional way of “I want your miso soup everyday for the rest of my life.”  Yes that means, will you marry me.  After a long pause she said yes.  We dated over the phone for four months until we could afford a plane ticket.  Our first real date was the day before our wedding.  We have now been married for 3 1/2 years and have two children.

David J., Laie, Hawaii

Julie and I had been going out for 3 years. We had always planned on living in the same place after graduation and it just so happened that we both landed jobs in Fresno, CA. I always knew, ever since we started dating, that Julie and I would be together forever. After graduation in May we went to look for apartments in California during the first week of June. While there we decided to do some site seeing. On our last day in California we decided to climb a mountain in Sequoia National Park. I knew that this would be the perfect time to propose. I had brought the ring with me the day we climbed the mountain. When we reached the top, after a 3 mile hike, I set up the camera on time delay. Julie, who is afraid of heights didn’t think she’d be able to make it to the top, but with some persuasion from me she finally did. The camera went off right as she made it to the top and I got down on one knee and pulled out the ring and asked her that very important question, “will you marry me?”. She definitely forgot she was afraid of heights and started jumping up and down on top of the mountain. It was perfect and we have the picture to prove it!

- Charlie H., Clovis, California

I was a sever at Chili’s in Naples, Florida at the time, waiting to go to tech school for the Air Force and driving a 1988 convertible Ford mustang that was always giving me trouble, mechanically.
On Christmas Eve Anni, my girlfriend and student at the time, came out from Ft Lauderdale, FL to spend Christmas with me since we couldn’t afford to fly home to Montana.
Unfortunately I had to work that evening, so my roommate and good friend, Mike, brought her out for dinner so that she could see me.
After a little while she got a phone call, so I used the opportunity to show Mike the ring and told him I’d be giving him a call later on that night.
It worked out perfectly because I got off work sometime around Eleven PM and because we’ve had so many memories there, I drove down to the beach, which, lucky for me, wasn’t very far from Chili’s.
I then called Mike and told him that I was pretending that my car had broken down again, and could he bring his tool set and my girlfriend.
After convincing her to come with, which was hard because it was cold out and late, he chatted with her and kept her distracted all the way to the beach. She didn’t even realize where she was until they got out.
I had the hood propped up and as they drove up I threw my shoe at the car in a fit of rage.
Anni got out and asked me why I was there and what was wrong with the car. Since she could clearly see that I was upset I told her that I don’t want to talk about it and that I need to go for a walk to let some steam out.
As I was saying this, Mike was getting his toolkit out of his car to “fix” on my car.
So, we walked out onto the beach and it being dark (midnight) you couldn’t really see what was in the sand. So I asked what it was and Anni bent down and touched what she realized to be a rose. She then started walking down reading WILL YOU MARRY ME, spelled out in roses on the sand.
When she turned around with tears in her eyes, I was on my knee….
She said “yes”

- Phil S., Tampa, Florida

Kara and I had been wanting to go to Washington, D.C. for a while for a day together and walk around the city and visit the sites in D.C. So, we planned on arriving Saturday morning and leaving late Saturday night.
We got in the car early Saturday morning and drove up to our nation’s capital and started the morning at the Jefferson Memorial. Then we walked around the Potomac River to get to the Washington Monument. From the Washington Monument, we made our way down the street around the mall to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History where we looked at the “Hope diamond.”
Brandon has a friend who is an attorney in the West Wing of the White House. So, he set up a private tour of the West Wing of the White House. We got to spend the afternoon touring what would otherwise be closed to the public in the White House. We saw the Oval Office, the Cabinet Member’s Meeting Room, and other important rooms.
At about the half-way point of our tour, we went down the “million dollar hall” which was full of original Norman Rockwell paintings worth millions. This hallway led out to the Rose Garden of the White House. Our tour guide, Robert, said “You two go ahead out and we will catch up with you,” so Brandon and I went out into the Rose Garden where he proposed to me.
The Rose Garden is significant to us because for our first date, Brandon surprised me and took me to the Botanical Gardens here in Norfolk, and he had a picnic lunch made for us to eat in the Rose Garden. So, the proposal in the Rose Garden was very special.

- Brandon R., Virginia Beach, Virginia

I am currently deployed in Iraq with the US Army. I left in August 2007 with an “expected” leave time in April 2008. Once overseas, I switched my leave time to December so I could try to be home around Christmas - only I did not tell my girlfriend Christie. Everyone in my family and her family helped plan the event behind her back. They worked with me picking out an engagement ring and creating the perfect engagement. Christie continued to believe I would be home in April. I got her best friends to paint her nails, I booked a reservation at the local Olive Garden, I invited all of her family and all of my family to be there, and invited the NBC news crew. Once my plane got in, I picked up the ring at the jewelry store, changed into my dress blues uniform and went to Olive Garden to wait for Christie. My sister convinced Christie to go out to dinner with her. When they went to seat her at a table, I was there with a dozen roses. She screamed as the news crew got the entire thing on tv. I dropped down to one knee after our first hug in 4 months and told her “I came all this way to ask you if you’ll marry me”. She said yes! It wasn’t until about 30 seconds later that she realized she was on TV and both of our families and her best friends were there to witness the entire thing. We were interviewed by the news and appeared on the 10pm local NBC news. I returned to Iraq 2 weeks later. Our wedding date is 8.8.09.

- Kevin E., Greenfield, Wisconsin

A little tension, a great outcome. Best of all, no one went to jail!