Not every important moment in life must be dramatic or Instagrammable—not least a considered joint decision to embark on a lifelong commitment—but not having any ritual could feel a bit anticlimactic. The solution that some experts came up with was to throw an engagement party. This shifts the emphasis of the ritual from the theater of “popping the question” to the thrill of sharing your joyful news with loved ones. An engagement party might not feel incredibly different from a wedding celebration, but are you really going to argue against having another party?
Another way of revising the current ritual is to alter the mechanism of the question and answer altogether. Cate Denial, a historian at Knox College, brought up the concept of “handfasting,” a broad term for “the clasping of hands and a promise to marry.” Its origins are unclear (it might be Celtic, Scandinavian, or something else) and it takes different forms (you can hold hands, shake hands, tie them together). But Denial noted that there are historical examples of couples using it to get married without an officiant—a powerful symbol of self-determination that might make for a nice, mutual engagement mechanism.
Ultimately, the most satisfying alternative I came across was to do as the proposal planner Caicedo’s clients did and make the traditional one-sided ritual two-sided. The innovation of having each partner propose is more common in LGBTQ relationships—per The Knot, 9 percent of same-sex couples have “joint proposals,” while only 1 percent of different-sex couples do. Mutual proposals manage to make engagements more egalitarian without getting rid of the parts of proposals that many people love: Couples still get a story-worthy moment (two, in fact), as much surprise as they care to have, and a well-defined procedure that is legible as a marker of a new life stage.
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