Interesting Marriage Proposals
Belisarius
Admin Emeritus
in Heaven
Historical, Literary, or Made-Up welcome.
Possibly apocryphal, but one of my favorites:
After Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was widowed for a year, he called his secretary into his office.
"You're fired," he stated.
"But, why?" she stammered.
"Because my wife can't work for me."
Possibly apocryphal, but one of my favorites:
After Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was widowed for a year, he called his secretary into his office.
"You're fired," he stated.
"But, why?" she stammered.
"Because my wife can't work for me."
Comments
Mrs Gramps and I have been married 49 years.
"People will be saying we're getting married".
"Ach away on, sure who'd have us?"
Peter asks: "Placetne, magistra?" (Does it please you, mistress/teacher?)
Harriet replies: "Placet." (It pleases.)
This is actually a sort of echo of a ceremony once used at Oxford:
Adapted from "The Wimsey Annotations": A ritualized vote is taken as to the worthiness of each student to be awarded a degree. First, an official will propose (in Latin) that the graduates be admitted to the relevant degree; a vote is then taken, although, in practice only, one vote will be cast in favor.
Nice! It could also be said of some couples we know!
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/145/pg145-images.html#chap05
We had been dating 18 months by that point, were both young Christians, and at no point were either of us interested in casual dating. So it was just a natural progression.
To be honest, I'm slightly confused myself--I guess instead of "Will you marry me?", it was "When do you want to get married?".
Punchline aside, at least she now knew how things stood and could take it from there.
She comes back to the Von Trapp house, falls into the Captain's arms in floods of tears, and sobs, "They... they say I have to marry you!"
Now why didn't they use that in the film? Far more interesting than standard Hollywood romance.
Hedghog's old-time radio show anecdote made me think of Wilfred Pickles' 'Have a Go' show. Hadn't thought about that for years!
The "ceremony" is still current. The senior proctor presenting candidates for degrees still asks the assembled Congregation "placetne?" In practice, the ritual pause to allow for an objection is rather short, and having observed no complaint, the proctor proceeds by announcing "placet".
That's really nice :-)
I said 'No.' (Pause during which I realised the potential for misunderstanding my reply) '...we live in a different parish now, we'd have to get married there.'
Edit: Until 1870.
We’d been dating around 10 months and were driving on a dark, rural road, coming home from some event, and I brought the subject up, reminding her that some months ago she’d said she wasn’t quite ready yet. I said I wondered how she was feeling now. “I ready,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, and I kept driving.
That earned me a punch on the arm—mostly playful. “Well, you wouldn’t want me to ask you when I can’t even look at you, would you?,” I asked. That may have gotten me another punch.
I asked her two or three weeks later, on the day before Easter, while we were hiking in one of her favorite spots. We told her family the next day at Easter dinner.
Today marks 38 years that we’ve been married. She deserves many medals.
Also, I'm a little comforted by the people on here who got engaged so quickly. We started dating October of one year and announced our engagement in January when we saw his family. Everyone thought we were too fast, but 20+ years later, I guess it worked out okay. (No proposal here either, just a discussion.)
And not by a long shot! I got a punch in the arm just a few days ago.
Shortly before the summer term began we went for a walk in which I proposed. That was mid-April. I got my answer at the end of the month. We caused something of a stir as a number of our contemporaries at college had no idea we were even going out. Also we hadn’t really met each others parents.
That was all three and a half decades ago.
At work the next day I discovered there had been an office sweepstakes running as to whether we would get engaged at Christmas or New Year, and our mid December announcement spoiled the fun!
The evening that Mr Nen planned to propose to me went a bit pear-shaped as he took me to a restaurant where, it transpired, he'd taken a previous girlfriend. I thought that was tactless of him, and said so. On the way back to where I was staying we stopped at the top of a hill; it was dark, cold and windy and he said, "I want to ask you to marry me" and I (still feeling slightly peeved) said, "Do it, then" so he went down on one knee. I did say yes, and we've been married for 40 years.
During that time, he told a couple of people (in jest) that he was my older brother, and even made up a ridiculous story about my mother having had two husbands to explain why we looked so different. I don't think he expected to be believed.
Well, we graduated, married, and went off to seminary--where we ran into one of those people he'd told that freaky story to. When he said, "This is my wife," her eyes got SO BIG. It took a long time for him to convince her that in fact, he had not married his biological sister. I would like to think he learned something from that mess, but I rather doubt it.
We got engaged the next day (Easter Sunday 1987) and just watched as people found out.
Somebody asked me if we were going to put a notice in the local paper, and I said, "good heavens no - by Thursday everybody'll know!"
I wasn't far wrong.
Our road to marriage was much faster. We met in January at work, we became a couple in March, I proposed in May and we married in October. 48 years later and I think she's a "keeper."
How?
I was reading that one as asking her if she would like to be buried in the bit of the churchyard set aside for his family. So 'our' refers to his family's burial plot (aka ground).