Thinking of popping the question? What better day than February 14th? And if you want to do it in style, the following stories might inspire you
SINEAD WATSON AND ANTHONY QUINN. ENGAGED 1999. MARRIED 2000
Sinead, then a teacher in Ranelagh Multi-Denominational School, recalls: "I was teaching sixth class upstairs. It was around 2pm on a Friday, and the kids were watching a video - very educational, I know - when one of them goes 'Miss Watson, there's a man at the window'. There had been fellas in cleaning the windows, so I presumed it was just one of them, but when I turned around I saw it was Anthony. I wondered what he wanted, then noticed he was holding this rather limp bunch of flowers and shouting, but I couldn't really hear. I went over and looked down, and I saw two of our builders (we were having a house built at the time) holding the ladder. I thought, if they're here, it must be serious.
"But because it's this really modern building, the windows only open a tiny bit, so it wasn't exactly Romeo and Juliet - I couldn't fling the window open. By now the kids were going berserk, and since school finishes at ten past two, parents started showing up. They started clapping and cheering too. It was really embarrassing and I had no choice; my only thought was to say yes and get him down from there.
"I had always said to him that it had to be a really special moment when he proposed, and it was. Afterwards, some friends told the story in a competition on a radio station, and we ended up winning free photography for the wedding."
NICOLA BERMINGHAM AND BARRY KEENAGHAN. ENGAGED 2005. HOPE TO MARRY IN BUDAPEST IN 2007
Nicola says: "For the past three years, Barry and I have gone to the Chilli Club restaurant off South Anne Street on the 23rd of December. This night, though, I thought there was something funny, because when he introduced himself to the waitress at the door, there was this light of recognition in her eyes, and she led us to a quiet table and dimmed the lights.
"I always have the same thing there, so I just glanced at the menu and put it down. Then Barry announces that he's thinking of having fish. And I said, But Barry you don't eat seafood, and he goes, Well I'm thinking of starting. What do you think of number 26 there on the menu? I looked and saw 'pan-fried Offalyman' and thought it was a bit unusual, then I read on and I saw my name and thought it was maybe a new herb. Totally clueless, I asked, Is this on yours, and he then he opened up the box with the ring, and the penny finally dropped. He had arranged with the waitress to have the menu printed up with all these little clues and the marriage proposal written into it.
"I had an idea that he might ask sometime. We had sort of talked about it and I had been dropping hints like leaving leaflets about engagement rings around and that sort of thing. I would never have asked him, though. I'm kind of old-fashioned that way. I said yes right there and then. And we stayed in the Conrad afterwards. He had organised that too. He did well, I have to say."
ANTHONY FOX AND LEANNE WILLARS. ENGAGED AND MARRIED IN 2000
Anthony Fox did not have an engagement ring to hand when he popped the question nearly six years ago. He and his girlfriend Leanne Willars were up to their chins in an old roll-top bath full of steaming hot water on a remote Scottish island when he decided to ask her to be his wife.
The couple met in New York where Leanne, who is South African, got some tickets from her flatmates for an Irish repertory theatre show and went backstage at the production of Juno and the Paycock and met the actor who would become her husband.
She went back to London and they had a year apart, with letters and visits across the Atlantic. When he came back to Dublin she moved to Ireland at the beginning of 1997. Three years later they headed off to Scotland on Anthony's motorbike. The ferry trip to the Isle of Colonsay was blustery and by the time they got to Colonsay House where they were staying in a converted nursery, they were freezing.
They tried in vain to light the fire with some damp wood and then spied the huge bath, filled it to the brim with boiling water and both hopped in to warm up. When she said yes they came back into the room to find that the feeble fire had turned into a cheerful blaze and they sat in front of it to plan the wedding.
They wanted to marry that September and had to appear in the family court to get around the three-month notice period. The formalities were carried out in the registry office in Cavan General Hospital. The following day they walked to the top of a mound near Cuilcagh House where Swift started writing Gulliver's Travels, in Co Cavan. The last guests left the marquee at 6.30 the next morning.
They have two daughters, aged one and three now so the motorbike gets very little use. Anthony has written a screenplay of a love story against the background of the Troubles in 1970s Cavan and is working with Graham Cantwell of The Attic Studio on getting it into production this summer.
MADELEINE LYONS AND KIERAN GARRY. ENGAGED 2003. MARRIED 2004
Madeleine remembers: "My now husband told me he was taking me away for a surprise weekend. I pestered him so much to know where we were going, he finally conceded it was Dromoland Castle. On the chosen day however, we were outside Galway, and he took a turn down a dirt road until Aer Arann loomed before us. The real surprise, he told me, was that we were going to the Aran Islands, a place I'd always said I'd like to visit.
"Having suffered the ignominy of being weighed before boarding, I cried for the duration of the 20-minute flight as I saw my weekend of unparalleled luxury go up in flames. We checked in at the finest B&B on the island, a good mile or so from the main action - changed into our wet gear and walked to the pub. We then dined alone in the 70-seater restaurant and were charged about €80 for very average food. We then trudged back home in the rain and watched The Late Late Toy Show in our lonely little room.
"Next morning he made me cycle - uphill all the way - to Dún Aengus. And there he produced the ring, and a bottle of champagne from his backpack. It was the most unforgettably romantic experience ever. The cycle back was downhill all the way. We arranged to get off the island immediately, and booked into the Radisson in Galway for that night."
SÍLE SEOIGE AND GLEN MULCAHY. ENGAGED 2001. MARRIED 2005
Síle recalls: "It's all a bit of a blur to be honest. We went to Amsterdam about four years ago, and that was when he actually proposed for real and then we came back here and got the ring and made it official. But about six months after that we were in Paris, and went up the Eiffel Tower, as you do. When we reached the top - it being the city of romance - I got it into my head that I'd ask him to propose again, just as a joke between us. There was a group of Japanese tourists nearby and they thought it was for real, so I started to milk it a bit. They were watching and hanging on my every word, so I deliberately left a big pause then finally accepted and gave a big dramatic hug and all that. And they gave a massive round of applause and took photos and everything. We thought it was hilarious, but I guess you had to be there.
"After that we spent six months travelling around Europe by camper van, and wherever we ended up we tended to visit the local viewing point, the TV tower in Berlin, Prague Castle or wherever, and - again I emphasise, only for a bit of crack; I had long ago accepted and wasn't toying with him or anything - I'd ask him to go down on one knee and pop the question all over again. And sometimes he would, and sometimes he'd tell me to flip off. Anyway, wegot married last September, so our little in-joke is over now."
BETH O'HALLORAN AND PAUL SMYTH. ENGAGED 2005
Artist Beth O'Halloran had no idea what her boyfriend, Paul Smyth, was planning when they walked up Howth Head last Christmas Eve. After 18 months together, she was thrilled by his request to walk. "I dropped everything. We were actually going for a walk," she laughs, explaining that her rock-musician boyfriend is not the outdoorsy type.
Smyth had it planned to have a picnic on the hill and to propose with champagne in crystal glasses. He had given a shopping list and instructions to his friend and fellow musician in the band The Jimmy Cake, Simon O'Connor. Simon was to stand guard over the picnic basket, remain out of sight until they arrived and then leave without being seen.
Beth and Paul walked towards the lighthouse until they came upon a beautiful basket filled with all manner of things, including champagne. Beth wondered who could have left it, but Paul picked it up with great mystery and said there was more. They sat on his coat and he proposed as the light began to fade. "I wept like a baby. I've never cried from happiness but I sobbed," says Beth. Paul, who had even gone to Howth Head "on a recce" the day before, was thrilled and moved too. "I was shaking. It was very intense," he says.
MARIANNE CROWLEY AND MICHAEL GORMAN. ENGAGED 1970. MARRIED THREE WEEKS LATER
Marianne Crowley was antagonistic towards Michael Gorman when she heard he had been "the dissenting voice" on her interview board.
But, she got the job: as part of the team which would establish a new Bord Fáilte office in Paris. "Every time Michael (the boss) came over to the Paris office, I refused to be there. I'd flounce out in my mini skirt. I never did attend a meeting that he was at," she recalls.
When she moved back to work in the Dublin office, Gorman was still her boss. When he asked her out to lunch in the Hibernian Hotel in Dawson Street she took her files and prepared to discuss "incentive travel" with him. "We never did discuss incentive travel," she recalls. "He said to me that evening what would I think of getting married. I replied then via his secretary," she remembers, laughing.
She said yes but, afraid she would change her own mind, she added a proviso. "I sent him this fax saying 'Sooner rather than later', that we would have to do it quickly." They got married three weeks later and they have never looked back. That was more than 35 years ago.
NEASA MORAN & JOHN JORDAN. ENGAGED 2004
One boyfriend who was on the ball when it came to romance was Australian native John Jordan who two years ago shocked his girlfriend with a proposal as they watched Australia play Ireland in International Rules at Croke Park. After the first quarter a giant screen flashed the question all over the stadium: "Neasa Moran, will You Marry Me?" The action then jumped to Neasa from Clonsilla in Dublin who sitting gobsmacked in the audience said yes to her boyfriend of four years. "I was sitting there like a fish with my mouth open" she said after the intimate crowd of 60,000 sports fans who had witnessed the proposal erupted in cheers. "I was waiting for the right moment," said John. "When she saw her name on the screen she just kept saying 'That's my name'. I had the ring and everything I was well prepared."
A spokesperson for Croke Park says they often get requests to get married on the pitch but that they have no plans to offer the service at the moment. Spoilsports.
Interviews by Catherine Cleary, Catherine Foley, Conor Goodman, Róisín Ingle