Engagement-Ideas.com

Ever since Alice and I started dating, I thought we might get married. So early in our relationship, when I asked her “nonchalantly” about her dream proposal, I listened closely. It was an intricate outdoor lakeside fantasy, complete with floating candles and a canoe ride.

A year and a half later, I was ready and eager to propose. There was only one problem: it was December. December in Ukraine means frozen lakes, which are somewhat bad for canoing.

So the elaborate planning began.

I called some camps and found one that would let me borrow a canoe. Then I needed a lake. I made some more calls, explaining my plight, and found a camp with an indoor pool that was willing to let me bring in a canoe.

Some friends and I drove to the camp to get the canoe. And two nights, some spray-painted cardboard trees, and several floating candles later, I was ready to propose.

After a nice dinner, I blindfolded Alice and drove her to the camp.

I led her inside and took off the blindfold. She couldn’t believe what she saw: the canoe floating in the indoor pool, large spray-painted trees, floating candles, and a few dozen friends and family I’d invited for the event. Even some of the staff at the camp stuck around to watch!

We got in the canoe, I paddled out to the center of the “lake,” and while trying to balance the boat as I got on one knee, popped the question. She accepted!

On the way back to the edge of the pool, I saw my friends waiting to tip us. So I saved them the trouble. We both got soaked, but at least it wasn’t an icy lake!

I’ve thought about this one a lot before, which may be a little strange because I’m a guy, but oh well. I’m a graphic designer, in love with a graphic designer. Our whole lives focus around design and organization, so I always thought that should fit into a marriage proposal.

She and I have spent the past year in school working on compositions of text, along with dots and lines and shapes. Sounds boring, I know, but it becomes an art form when you do it for long enough. I always thought it would be great to have little cards to leave as hint to go to a certain place or look for something else, as a kind of scavenger hunt kind of thing. Then I’d get to design each card!

I’d leave one card in plain sight for her to see, and it would have instructions of where to find the next one, and so on. I’d like to make it as vague as I can while still communicating the idea, so that way she would have to think a lot to figure out where the next hint would be. Then I would design a giant banner, possibly a billboard, to have visible from the last card, so she’d come over a hill or around a corner or something and see the giant proposal. Hopefully she wouldn’t be too upset that I got to use the entire proposal as a graphic design project!