How to Propose to a Feminist

You might be wondering, how does one propose to a feminist? Well, I can't give you any hard fast rules, but I can tell you how I did it.

Monday is our weekly date night. For the last ten weeks, we have been going through a book (we really like books) called Ten Great Dates Before You Say I Do. It has all sorts of topics to discuss about planning a marriage and family. I highly recommend it. Anyway, we were finishing the final chapter, so I told my fiancee that I wanted to do something special for that night. We ended up going to the restaurant we went to on our first date out. While we were there, some friends of ours were setting up some stuff for me in the art gallery (sanctuary for those of you who haven't been) of our church (feminists can love Jesus too). This was my second choice of location, but it was raining, so I couldn't do it at the park like I had originally planned.

Dinner went faster than planned, so when I called them from the bathroom, they weren't ready and asked me to stall for about 20 minutes. I went back to the table and told my fiancee that I just wanted to sit and talk for a little while. Then I asked her a bunch of questions about the book to stall for more time. After a while, we headed over to the church.

When we got there, we parked in the back as usual, but when I checked my text messages, my friend had told me to come in the front. At this point my fiancee was already extremely suspicious because I am not sly at all, and by the time we pulled around front, she was pretty sure what was really going on. As we walked up to the building, there were some people out front in the courtyard swing dancing. It was pretty wet outside, so my fiancee thought it was a little odd that they would be dancing there. In reality, they were using the sanctuary until our friends kicked them out.

When you walk into the building where our church meets, there is a coffee shop that is open all week. You have to go through part of the coffee shop to get to the church. Our friends that helped set up were in there along with a few others that just happened to be there that night. I told my fiancee that we weren't there for coffee and took her into the sanctuary.

The lights were all off, and there were candles lit all around the stage. There was a big bouquet of flowers on the edge of the stage, and in the background, we were playing a CD of old love songs that I had made for her a few months ago. I took her over to the stage, and we sat down on the steps. I told her that the flowers in the bouquet represented different things about her and our relationship that I really love. I then explained the meaning of each one. (She doesn't remember much of what I said.) Then I got down on one knee, pulled out the ring, and asked her to marry me. She was speechless, but she nodded her head and eventually said yes through some tears.

After a little while, one of our friends came in to ask if the swing dancers could have the sanctuary back, so we followed her into the coffee shop and were greeted with a round of applause. After we briefly exchanged hugs and handshakes, we went upstairs to talk and call our families. The best part is that no one is usually in the upstairs room except during meetings and services, but there was a girl studying up there. We were really loud and excited and clearly trying to share a personal moment, but she just wouldn't leave. Eventually, she got the picture or got annoyed and left us alone.

So basically that's how you propose to a feminist.