Celebrating private marriage proposals
Balancing Act
Who doesn’t swoon at the sight of a carefully staged, go-big-or-go-home marriage proposal?
The kind director Glen Weiss pulled off when he proposed to his girlfriend, Jan Svendsen, onstage at the Emmys. The kind with a flash mob. The kind you see on Jumbotrons. The kind you see at the United Center. Jennifer Powers, for one. “We used to go to Cubs games all the time together, and we would sometimes be there for proposals that would make it on the big screen,” Powers wrote on Facebook. “I always threatened Tim that if he ever pulled that at Wrigley, I would say no.”
(He proposed at the bottom of a ski hill in Wisconsin. She said yes.)
I was inspired to start asking people about their marriage proposals after the Weiss/Svendsen moment because, as lovely as those grand gestures are, I think we overlook the beauty of the private (maybe even spur-of-the-moment?) exchange between two people in love.
And can I just say the answers have been great fun? They’re such a wonderful reminder that unions launch and flourish in all sorts of ways, and they don’t have to be cameraready.
Noah Lomax proposed to Stacy Brill at the Orland Park (Ill.) Cheesecake Factory on Aug. 19, the day after the first anniversary of their first date.
“I knew she might be expecting it on the actual anniversary,” Lomax said.
The couple met online, after Facebook recommended Brill as someone with whom Lomax might want to connect.
“I went to her page and did my due diligence,” said Lomax, 36.
“You cyberstalked me,” Brill, 39, said. “It’s called cyberstalking.”
He wrote her a long note. She wrote him a long note back. They exchanged numbers. They talked on the phone for 10 straight hours. They went on a first date that lasted 12 — a vegan restaurant in Chicago, followed by dessert at a little spot in Evanston, followed by GameWorks in Schaumburg. They knew. In spite of her lifelong loyalty to the Green Bay Packers and his die-hard allegiance to the Chicago Bears, they knew.
They were married Sept. 29, five weeks after Lomax proposed. The ceremony was at City Hall, and they celebrated with breakfast afterward at White Palace Grill. They dressed in Packers/Bears gear.
“The city clerk had a field day with us,” Lomax said. “Everyone in line was chuckling when we walked in.”
“It’s about the two of us,” Brill said. “We’re playful. We have fun. We wanted something that reflected us.”
They wanted to save their money for other pursuits.
“We want to travel and have freedom,” Lomax said. “We want to set money aside for diapers and day care if we have kids.”
Which is why, Brill said, she didn’t want an expensive engagement ring.
“It’s diamond-esque,” she said. “We didn’t want to start off with anything that puts us in a financial bind. This allows us to have fun, and it allows us to be fun.”
In that way, their proposal and their wedding are as romantic as they come, because both happened with an eye toward the long-term, the till-deathdo-us-part part, not just the here and now.
Shonda Talerico Dudlicek’s now-husband proposed on a quiet New Year’s Eve.
“We were sitting on my couch in my condo, and he just said, ‘Do you want to make me the happiest man alive and marry me?’” Dudlicek recalled. “He didn’t even have a ring. I went upstairs to my jewelry box and got my mom’s engagement ring and put it on. I wore that ring until we added stones from my grandma’s wedding ring to a three-stone ring for our 10-year anniversary that I wear every day. Seventeen years and counting.”
The lack of a ring didn’t stop Jen Bemis’ now-husband, Norm, from popping the question.
“I went to his place after an evening out with some co-workers, and he was acting strange,” Bemis wrote on Facebook, in response to my query. “He said he had to make a phone call and then went to a bedroom to do it in private. I was mad because, I mean, why did he need privacy? I was going to leave, and then he came by me and said, ‘I had to call my mom to see if it would be inappropriate to ask you to marry me without having a ring yet.’”
His mom gave her blessing. Norm crafted a ring from a paper cigar band. Jen said yes.
“We casually talked about getting married before,” my friend Laarni Livings recalled. “When we woke up on Feb 28th, 2008, I mentioned to Tom that the following day was leap day and wouldn’t it be funny if we got married on leap day. So we did!”
At the Cook County courthouse.
“Two-and-a-half anniversaries — 10 years — later,” she added, “we are still the same spontaneous couple.”
Roland Tolliver proposed at his Logan Square apartment after a walk home from dinner.
“I was a third-year medical student, and my wife was teaching in Park Ridge,” he recalled. “We were sitting and talking when I asked her, ‘Do you think we make a good couple?’”
Sure, she said, listing some reasons. Then she asked why.
“I answered, ‘I was planning to ask you to marry me,’” Tolliver told her. “I didn’t even have the ring yet, but I knew she was the one and didn’t want to let the chance pass. Thirtyfour-plus years and five children later, it wasn’t elaborate, but it was memorable.”
Elaborate, sometimes, can wait.
“We have elaborate dreams of going overseas together,” Brill said. “We want to save our money for an experience that you can learn from and grow from and all five senses are engaged and you meet a lot of new people.”
Not a bad way to describe a life together too.
Join the “Heidi Stevens’ Balancing Act” Facebook group, where she hosts live chats every Wednesday at noon CDT.