“Are You Ready To Be Promoted?”: 46 Engagement Stories That Might Have You Saying “No”

One proposal in particular set the bar for public romantic failure. In November 2014, a programmer in Guangzhou, China, arranged 99 iPhone 6s into the shape of a heart and proposed to his girlfriend in front of a crowd. He spent approximately $82,000 on the phones. That was two years ' worth of his salary. She said no, and the awkward photos went viral on Weibo within hours.

The choice of Singles' Day (China's annual celebration of being unattached) as the backdrop for a very public commitment proposal is either deeply ironic or extremely poorly researched. The assumption that 99 smartphones arranged in a geometric shape would communicate love more effectively than, say, a conversation, also raises serious questions that $82,000 cannot answer.

The lesson, if there is one, is that grand gestures only land when the foundation is already there. No amount of iPhones, skywriting, flash mobs, or hired photographers can manufacture a yes from someone who isn't ready to say it.

In 2019, a video went viral in South Africa of a man proposing to his girlfriend at a KFC. Sadly, the internet did what the internet does — it laughed. Hard. The comments were brutal, the memes were immediate, and the couple found themselves at the center of a global joke about romance and ambition. What happened next, however, is where we should take notes.

A groundswell of South Africans, and eventually people from around the world, decided that the mockery had been completely misplaced and that two people visibly in love deserved better than a punchline. Donations came in. Businesses offered their services. What started as a viral joke became a viral redemption arc, and the couple ended up with a wedding of their dreams!

The story became something of a cultural reset about what proposals are actually supposed to be. Not a performance for strangers on the internet. Not a production budget, a location, or a ring that photographs well. Just one person asking another person a question and meaning it. The KFC couple meant it completely. We see a joke about “ring-finger licking good” brewing…

The tradition of the engagement ring as we know it is not an ancient romantic custom. It is, almost entirely, a marketing campaign. In 1947, De Beers advertising agency N.W. Ayer created the slogan "A Diamond is Forever," and with it, single-handedly convinced an entire generation that a diamond ring was a measure of love. A non-negotiable.

The "two months' salary" rule was also invented by De Beers. In a later advertising push, they simply suggested the figure, repeated it often enough, and watched it calcify into social expectation. It worked so well that most people today treat it as an established norm. The average engagement ring in the United States currently costs around $6,000, which is a remarkable return on a single piece of copywriting.

None of which means engagement rings aren't meaningful. They clearly are, to millions of people, and that meaning is entirely real and valid. But the next time someone implies the size of a ring reflects the size of a feeling, it's worth remembering that particular equation was written by people who were selling diamonds.

But the humbling truth is that no matter how much planning goes into them, someone is probably going to have notes. According to a survey of 2,000 engaged or married Americans, just 39% gave their proposal an A+. Two in five couples would award a perfect score, which means three in five have at least one thing they'd do differently. The average grade was an A-. Not quite the dream...

The list of things people would change is both specific and slightly brutal. 35% would change the location, 18% would change how the ring was actually delivered, and 13% would change the words their partner said. The "are you ready to be promoted" gentleman is presumably in this category.

The most important finding, though, is that the proposals people remember most fondly had very little to do with location, delivery, or diamond cut. They just had the right person asking the right question.

The proposal industrial complex has a lot to answer for. It has convinced an entire generation that the moment needs a hidden with all the bells and whistles. It has set expectations so cinematic that nearly two-thirds of people walk away from their own engagement with notes. Notes! On the best day of their lives! This is what happens when Pinterest gets involved in human emotion.

And yet. The proposals in this thread that land the hardest are almost never the elaborate ones. They're the ones where something went slightly wrong, and both people laughed. The ones where the speech was imperfect but completely sincere. The KFC couple understood something that $82,000 worth of iPhones apparently couldn't communicate.

So if you're currently planning a proposal and spiraling about the details, here is the only note that actually matters. Get the person right. Everything else is just staging. The hidden photographer can go home. The diamond lobby can keep its opinions. And if something goes slightly, gloriously, hilariously wrong in the process? Even better. Trust the chaos. It knows what it's doing.

What is the cringiest proposal you have ever seen? Spill some tea in the comments!