Any event that begins with the line “Hello, I would like 99 of your iPhone 6 mobiles, please!” can only ever end badly, and expensively. No one knows this better than the man in Guangzhou, China, who spent around $85,000 dollars on the phones, which he arranged into a heart shape before asking his girlfriend to marry him, in front of a growing crowd in what appears to be a shopping centre car park. She said no.
Cynics have suggested this may have been be a stunt to celebrate the busiest online shopping day of the year. But I believe in love, so I must believe in love gone wrong. And I cannot argue with a woman who refuses to marry a man who thinks the only way to draw shapes is with iPhones. You certainly couldn’t have children with him. You’d be bankrupt after the first morning at nursery.
But public proposals seem to be more popular than ever. On YouTube “marriage proposal” gets 1.5m results, and there’s even a dedicated section for “marriage proposal fails”. Because going public does not guarantee an affirmative answer. A friend of mine had the question delivered by singing passengers in a tube carriage. (And she admits: “When I realised something was going on, my first thought was, ‘I do hope this isn’t a proposal.’ I said yes, and we’re happily married. But I wish he’d just asked me over dinner.”)
Even if the proposal itself is relatively sedate, it soon becomes public when someone says yes. When my boyfriend asked me to marry him this summer, I dithered a bit before putting a post on Twitter and Facebook – it seemed a bit too public, but it was a great way to share all the news with our friends at the same time.
It’s not unusual to receive a group email from a bride-to-be taking you through every stage of the proposal. Even Benedict Cumberbatch wasn’t too cool and private to announce his engagement in the Times, although I’m not sure how he feels about that decision now that Geri Halliwell has followed his lead. (Congratulations, Geri!)
When it comes to weddings, it’s easy to dismiss our thirst for publicity as a modern ill. However, when you love someone, it’s hard to shut up about it, as is evident in most poems and pop songs. I think everyone loves to hear a happy engagement story, whether it involves $85,000 of box-fresh technology, or a bus stop.
In the interests of full disclosure – and exhibitionism – I ruined the first time my boyfriend tried to ask me to marry him by spending a full evening whingeing about someone I was arguing with on Twitter. It was a case of second time lucky – just. He swept me away for a surprise romantic weekend, and I tried not to think about what I thought was on the cards until I got drunk at dinner and demanded to know: “Why haven’t you asked me to marry you yet?”
Happily, he did have a ring on him. And, even more happily, he still wanted to go through with it after my outburst. If you have an equally terrible engagement story, or just a truly romantic one, or a proposal that involved extras and CGI, go public with it! I’d love to hear all about it in the comments below.
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