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While surfing on the Internet I found a list of the “scariest marriage proposals” compiled by MSN. Given that this was just before Halloween, I thought they would have a spooky vibe. Well, I was wrong, though they were certainly scary.
The four real-life marriage proposals were as follows:
1) A pilot took his girlfriend up for a ride in his small plane, pretended they were crashing, and handed his girlfriend an emergency checklist. His proposal was written on the list: “initiate ring engagement procedure.”
2) A stuntman faked a car crash and his subsequent death. His girlfriend was called to the scene to identify his bloody body, and that’s when he got up and proposed.
3) A man gathered his girlfriend and friends to the roof of a tall building. He stood on the edge, and told everyone he had an announcement to make. He had a friend toss him the ring box, and fell over the edge of the building trying to catch it. From the inflatable cushion below, he popped the question.
4) A man and his girlfriend engaged in a zombie run (where some participants dress up like zombies and shuffle in chase after other participants, who run as if they are fleeing a real zombie attack). Hordes of the “zombies” surrounded the girlfriend, and then her boyfriend got down on one knee and proposed.
I’m sorry, but these are all horrifying. Well, I’m not as bothered by the last, because the girlfriend had a better idea of what was going on; she was participating in a zombie run, after all, and she knew that the “zombies” weren’t actually real. But every other poor woman was put into a life-or-death scenario, and that’s just unacceptable.
Look, I’m not often the flowers and hearts type. I didn’t expect a grand romantic gesture for my proposal, but I know that most women do. And even if they don’t, it’s flat-out awful to make a woman believe that the man she’s in love with is dead (or that they’re both about to become so) as part of one of the most romantic moments in their lives.
These proposals are just plain cruel for putting all of the women in these frightening situations. But a part of me wonders if there isn’t an additional different, but still mean, edge. I kind of feel like (especially for the “fall off a building” proposal, with friends there) the woman is being pressured into accepting. She’s certainly not got all her wits about her if she just thought the man she loved was dead; could these men be pushing their girlfriends to accept because their relief would make them say anything?
I know that’s pushing it a bit, but these proposals are still awful. These guys were probably just trying to be creative, but they came down way too far on the cruel end of the creative spectrum. I’m sure I could blame how insane and bloated our wedding culture has become: men are under pressure to make proposals special, grand, and unique. If we didn’t make such a big fuss out of it, I doubt these guys would have gone to such crazy lengths.
But no, there’s no excuse for them. These proposals are awful, and the stories are not at all romantic. I find myself rooting for these ladies to dump their men, not commit to them for life.
What do you think: were these proposals horrible, romantic, silly, or scary?
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*(The above image by scottchan is from freedigitalphotos.net).