After shopping for an engagement ring for what seemed like an eternity, I found myself endlessly confused about why there were so many different kinds of rings. I gave up. I took her with me to go shopping and let her pick it out, after all, she\’s the one that has to wear it. She had no idea I would be buying it within a few days.

I stop by the store to purchase the ring she chose, one day while she was at work, and my credit card gets declined. In a state of anger and frustration I call the bank that the credit card is through to find out what was going on. The lady on the other end of the line, a very ornery individual named Terry, informed me that for security reasons they had frozen the account. Apparently, the first time you use a credit card for more than about $1000 through that bank they decline the purchase.

I asked Terry to unfreeze it so that I could make my purchase. She told me that she would need consent of both card holders in order to unfreeze the account. The other card holder was, of course, my fiance. I tried to explain to her the situation and how that would ruin any element of surprise, and she simply did not care. Those pesky privacy policies!

So, I call up my fiance, hoping and praying that they would not tell her the whole story, and just ask for her consent to unfreeze the account, and tell her that she needs to call the number on the back of the card, plus this lady\’s extension, and have them unfreeze the account. She is frustrated by the whole thing (understandably) and calls Terry, more out of her anger than to have the account unfrozen.

She calls me back and says \”Its fixed. You can go back to (store name) and spend (exact dollar and cent amount) on (ring\’s model number). I\’ll be waiting for it when you get home.\”

Crap. This bank has effectively ruined the entire process. So, I go back to the store and pay for the ring. The salesman tells me that it will take four hours to set the stone, and to come back then. Well, I had to go to work so I arranged for one of my fraternity brothers to pick up the ring for me.

Determined to at least leave some element of surprise to the occasion, I told my fiance that my brother would be picking it up and that I would go get it on my way home from work. Which I did.

But, to throw some kind of surprise in there, I came home with a disappointed look on my face. She was all kinds of excited, but then I told her that I had accidentally misspelled his complicated last name when I wrote it on the claim ticket for the jeweler, and that because of that they would not release it to him. and that I wouldn\’t be able to pick it up for two days. Of course, I had it in my pocket the whole time.

We watched our recorded televisions shows and went through our normal night time routines. As I was about to leave, and was kissing her goodnight, I said \”By the way, I lied.\” she immediately through into a fit of rage and excitement. When she calmed down I asked her to marry me. She said yes.

James Herrin (Dallas, TX)

Learn How to make an Awesome Marriage Proposal

I planned a weekend away in August for Eleni and I to experience the State Fair in my hometown of Syracuse, NY. Knowing this would be the perfect cover to make plans for a proposal, I made preparation months in advance: purchasing the ring, getting permission from her father and mother, making the dinner reservations, and figuring out the plan with my parents to keep Eleni busy for the day.

On Friday, August 29, 2008, my mother took Eleni shopping so I could finalize my plans for the big evening. When they returned home, I told Eleni that we were going out for dinner. Our dinner was amazing - just the two us by candle-light at one of Syracuse\’s finest restaurants. We even received a complimentary appetizer, which almost blew my big surprise. The restaurant had NO idea that I was planning a proposal later in the evening, but when the sent the appetizer over, Eleni became curious and asked, \”Did you say anything to them?\” \”No, why would I,\” I nervously replied, hoping should would not discover my plan. Eleni later told me that she even checked the reservation book at the host stand to see if there was a special note written by our reservation.

After dinner, I took Eleni to a park by my house. I brought out the chocolate fondue and fresh fruit I prepared earlier in the day and we had a dessert \”pic-nic\” under the stars. When we were nearly finished, I said, \”I have one more surprise for you,\” and handed her one of three red roses. As I did so, I added, \”This rose represents the past… this rose represents the present,\” as I handed her rose number two. \”And this rose,\” I concluded, \”represents the future.\” I untied the ring from the rose, got down on one knee and proclaimed, \”Eleni Christina Herbert, you would make me that happiest man on earth if we can spend the rest of our lives together. Will you marry me?\” She was so surprised, she didn\’t answer at first, leaving me waiting on one knee until she finally exclaimed, \”Yes! Yes, of course!\” Eleni shared the news with her family and friends as we laid under the stars late into the evening.

We\’re looking forward to spending our lives together and celebrating with friends and family next year.

(I have a picture available - not of the proposal, but a recent trip of us in Greece)

David Wojcikowski (Fairfield, CT)

Learn How to make an Awesome Marriage Proposal

While we were down in Florida on vacation with my parents, we went to my favorite place of all time, Discovery Cove. At Discovery Cove we were walking down the little sand beach he stops to show me this really pretty seashell. He then said I should look inside it and there was my engagement ring. He then got down on one knee and proposed to me! I was so excited and still am very excited to this day.

Jessica Schuh (Round Lake, IL)

Learn How to make an Awesome Marriage Proposal

My sweetie took me out for a quiet picnic, just the two of us. He was so sweet and amazing that day. We went to a grassy area with a beautiful tree and sat down underneath it. We ate and we laid in the grass looking up at the clouds. I remember feeling like everything was perfect and the world was ours. I thought nothing could get better, but I was wrong. My sweetie sat up and pointed to the woods exclaiming \”Look, a family of deer!\” I sat up and looked but did not see the deer. I turned around to ask him where he had seen them and he was nervously holding a beautiful ring with Tanzanite stones (purple is my favorite color). He slipped the ring on my finger and I looked up at him teary eyed and before he could officially pop the question I cryed \”I thought there really were deer!\”. We both chuckled and he asked me and I said yes, throwing myself into his arms. It was the perfect day and a day I will never forget. Melissa (Ashland, Virginia)

Learn How to make an Awesome Marriage Proposal

Preface: Kendahl’s Story

On June 6, 2008, at 11:00 p.m., I received a call from my boyfriend Dave’s cell phone – but it wasn’t his voice on the other end. In the seconds immediately after the phone connected, my mind went through every possible reason why Dave’s friend Tommy was calling me from Dave’s cell phone, knowing that there was really only one explanation. “Dave was in an accident.”

Five hours later, after an interminable 260 mile mid-night drive from where I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, to where Dave was air lifted in Knoxville, Tennessee, I sat in shock as a doctor took me into a small room and told me that they were just trying to keep Dave alive until his parents got there to say good-bye. I spent two and a half hours by his bed early that Saturday morning, praying, crying, wondering what would happen, until the nurses kicked me out to change shifts.

In the weeks that followed, Dave surprised every person following his story and surpassed every expectation as he continued to improve through ten surgeries, two different types of dialysis, two ventilators and countless doctors and nurses reminding us constantly that he may not survive the next step.

Eleven days after his accident, once we were no longer wondering if Dave would live from moment to moment and I left the hospital for the first time to sleep in a hotel, I began to process the fact that although I had clearly jumped into our relationship with both feet because of the accident, I had no idea how Dave would be feeling if and when he regained consciousness. And for the first time, a question worked its way into my mind: “What happens if he wakes up and doesn’t want to be with me anymore?”

Gradually Dave did start to wake up, and three weeks after his accident, he tried to communicate for the first time. The tracheotomy tube in his throat prevented him from speaking, and he was too weak to hold a pen, so we resorted to lip reading. Talk about frustrating! In the beginning, it was one or two words at a time, always repeated at least twice and always only interpreted after multiple guesses. As time when on, however, I began to understand him more and more, and we even managed a few real conversations.

The Proposal: Dave’s Story

Things seemed to be progressing well for the next few weeks, and everyone began to relax a little bit…until I came down with sepsis, a severe, life-threatening infection, five weeks after my accident. We found out that I had sepsis just after Kendahl had returned to Cincinnati to work for a couple of days, so once again, she got a late-night phone call telling her to get to Knoxville as quickly as possible. Although the doctors had said that a person with sepsis can take weeks to get better, within a few days, my condition improved dramatically.

Kendahl and I had been dating for 16 months at that point and had known each other longer than that. I had been searching my feelings before the accident about where our relationship was heading and how I truly felt, and I had even started to think about proposing, but I had been holding off until I could meet her family and get her parents’ blessing. After seeing the dedication she had for me after the accident, however, I knew she was the one I had been waiting for, and although I realized it wasn’t the ideal way to do it, I decided that I needed to show her how I felt by asking her to marry me, whether I could actually say the words out loud or not.

On Sunday, July 13, 2008, while Kendahl stood at my bedside, I mouthed the words, “Will you marry me?” to her. Unfortunately for me, it was one of the few occasions that she did not read my lips on the first try. My parents and sister, who happened to be in the room, knew what I was saying and began to cry before Kendahl even understood what was going on. So I tried again, and this time, she got it. Thankfully, in spite of the setting, the lack of a ring and the fact that I had yet to meet her family, she said yes.

A few days after the proposal, word of our engagement started to spread through the ICU, and the nurses began teasing me for not getting Kendahl a ring. Luckily for me, my mom noticed a five dollar jewelry sale in the lobby of the hospital and picked up two “diamond” rings for me to choose from to give to Kendahl as a fun placeholder until I could get her the real thing.

After 80 days in the ICU and ten days on the regular hospital floor in Tennessee, I was transferred back to Cincinnati one day shy of three months after my accident. For the past two months, I have been recovering at the Drake Center, only 15 minutes from Kendahl’s house, which has made our lives much easier. Shortly after I was weaned off the ventilator and got my voice back, I was able to call Kendahl’s dad to finally ask for his blessing, which he gave (although I have yet to get the same thing from her three overprotective brothers).

Currently, Kendahl is on fake ring number two (the “diamond” fell out of the first one), her finger permanently green, and we are starting to make concrete plans for our future together. We have set our wedding date for June 6, 2009, exactly one year after my accident, and we plan to hold the ceremony and reception at the Underground, a Christian teen concert venue where we met as volunteers. Kendahl has been diligent in updating a blog (http://daveheckel.blogspot.com) on my progress to keep our hundreds of potential wedding guests informed, and we are all anxiously awaiting the day when we can celebrate together as Kendahl and I make our commitment to each other official.

David Heckel/Kendahl Lund (Cincinnati, OH)

Learn How to make an Awesome Marriage Proposal