It could be said that romance is not what it used to be. A man used to be able to rely on an intimate dinner at a quaint, secluded restaurant, a relatively costly bottle of bubbly and amicable conversation to be the perfect setting to pop the question to his long adored. But that was probably last seen decades ago.
The times are changing
Saturated by high-octane passion and puppy-perfect portraits of love proliferated by Hollywood, today’s prospective bridegrooms realise a classic proposal à la Casablanca just isn’t enough to compete with the likes of Ryan Reynolds’ extraordinary efforts in The Proposal.
Despite your better half suggesting that a simple proposal filled with romance and affection will suffice — she’s fabricating the truth.
Whether hopelessly-in-love couples admit it or not, over-the-top proposals are in vogue. Every time we hit up YouTube, Twitter or Facebook, the next engaged couple is outdoing another by going an extra step. This is essentially, romantics will argue, because it’s an ostentatious demonstration of how special one makes the other feel. #Awwww.
It’s a fact of modern life as painstakingly obvious as evolution itself. Women want more from a proposal now more than ever before. It’s not a blanket statement, of course.
There’s still room for the odd aforementioned dinner-for-two option with the ring nestling in the bottom of the bubbly flute. Or is there?
Fact: outrageous is good and desired.
And there’s no destination on Earth more equipped for the prodigiously excessive than Dubai. The unfortunate reality is that you might have to pull out all the stops along with your life savings to manage a semi-memorable proposal.
Luckily, Dubai is the city that offers some of the world’s most unique and extravagant experiences for your nervy encounter with fate and hopefully your fiancée to be. It is the perfect backdrop for the perfect proposal.
Richard Yolland, one of the proposees we spoke to insisted Dubai is the only city he considered as an appropriate destination to pop the question in dramatic fashion.
“I’d visited Dubai a few times and really love the weather, the scale and the style of city. I wanted to do something special for my fiancée and Dubai had so many options available it was the obvious choice,” he said.
Be inspired
Dubai is not short of options. Adventurous sorts can brave sharks and stingrays within a massive aquarium to pop the question. And with the slight chance that you will probably spend the rest of your married life tiptoeing around in constant fear — sharks and stingrays are a good way to start.
Further still, you could mount the world’s tallest building — replete with a view of the earth’s beautiful curvature, although proposing at the very top might require some wasta.
Or you could plummet gracefully towards to earth from 10,000 feet during a tandem skydive.
More accessible is an abra ride at the Madinat Jumeirah, where just such a proposal sparked a Valentine’s Day high-tea promotion. Equally, you could have your question etched into the ochre dunes of the might Empty Quarter, as one couple did down in Liwa’s Qasr Al Sarab.
In short, Dubai offers that extra something to — as James Blunt put it — “light the spark in your bonfire heart.” As we said at the start, romance isn’t what it used to be.
Popping the question at 10,000 feet
“She loves the free, fine, fresh wind in her hair/Life without care.” The inspired crooning of Frank Sinatra and Luther Vandross is a fitting soundtrack to Richard Yolland’s proposal to fiancée Andrea.
The English businessmen obviously knew that the she loves the wind in her hair so much that it matters little that the wind is at terminal velocity as she plummets in tandem with a stranger towards a sandy palm-shaped island on Dubai’s coast.
In fact their mutual love for all things windy and adrenaline-fuelled, he felt, provided the perfect opportunity to pop the question at Skydive Dubai. And it turned out to be an inspired move. It offered him the extra “WOW factor” that he felt his special lady deserved and would enjoy.
“I’d asked her tandem jumper to take a while in bringing her down so that I could prepare everything on the ground, so I was standing there waiting for about ten minutes,” he tells GN Focus.
“After a few false alarms, I saw her coming towards the landing area and I thought, “This is it. This is the moment that will change your life.”
“And then I was going through my head thinking exactly what I was going to say, and she landed and I went over to her and it was such a surreal moment; everything faded into the background and my only thought was “ask her and hope she says ‘yes’.”
But the extravagance of his romantic gesture surprised her so much that he thought she was deaf to his proposal amid the onrush of adrenaline and relief.
“The proposal was so unexpected by her, she was still feeling the adrenalin rush from the skydiving, so it took her about ten seconds to realise what was happening,” he said.
“My heart was beating so fast and time had slowed down and I was thinking, ‘what is she waiting for?!’ And then she said, ‘I will’. I just felt this massive surge of joy and elation run through my body.”
Coming soon to a wedding near you
Mohit Chugani’s proposal to Mehak Trehan, now Mehak Chugani, proved to be a blockbuster across Dubai’s social media scene with over 4,000 views on YouTube and an overwhelming reception on Facebook.
Mohit, a movie fanatic, arranged for a personalised trailer to be screened right before the movie. The video showed him profess his love for his wife-to-be at the time.
Blushing all the way through the entire performance, Mehak watched quietly, surrounded by friends and family. Mohit then walked up to her, went down on one knee and proposed.
“I wanted to do something larger than life and since we both are Bollywood movie buffs, it seemed like the perfect way to propose. Additionally, I have never heard of anyone proposing in a cinema in Dubai, I thought of giving it a shot,” explains Mohit.
Planning and preparation
The entire proposal took a little more than a week to plan with help coming from his parents, sister and friends. Together with tricking Mehak to be present on the day, Mohit had his hands full with shooting the trailer, getting special permissions from Vox Cinemas planning one of the biggest nights of their lives so far.
“I was nervous, but at the same time excited to see her reaction. It was nerve-wrecking to see myself on the big screen amongst strangers in the audience,” says Mohit describing the few minutes before and after the proposal.
“It felt absolutely super. Felt like I was a Bollywood hero who got his heroine at the end of the movie.”
Ever since the proposal, Mohit and Mehak Chugani have become local celebrities with many people noticing them around the city because of the video uploaded by Mohit’s brother on YouTube.
When asked if he would have done things differently, Mohit replies with a smile saying, “No, it is a special memory, and I would like to keep it that way.”
