Hiring a pro for marriage proposal sells oneself - short
By Beth Teitell
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Just in time for Valentine’s Day comes the news of a romantic new trend. And by romantic, I mean ‘‘depressing.” Grooms - make that wannabe grooms - are hiring proposal planners to help them close the deal. And people think housewives are desperate.
Call me old-fashioned, but don’t you think the national obsession with marketing has gone too far when a guy needs to shell out thousands of dollars to a professional to sell himself to his (potential) beloved? ‘‘Try me - I’m kind and attentive and, uh, I don’t have trans fats. I also come with wireless!”
Incredibly, the editor-in-chief of the Wedding Channel magazine is all for it (and presumably not just because of the expanded ad-revenue opportunities for her boss). ‘‘You have to remember this is an incredible experience not only in her life, but his as well,” Crys Stewart told me. ‘‘It’s very personal.”
Personal, in a let’s-involve-a-third-party kind of way.Look out, girls, those proposals may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.
Maybe some women go for it, but if I were on the receiving end of a really creative marriage proposal, only to find myself betrothed to a dud once he was off script, I might be a bit disappointed. It’s like learning your favorite actor, the lead romancer in all those chick flicks, is a mumbling wimp when he’s not playing a part. Only it’s real life. And it’s yours.
But bait-and-switch concerns didn’t bother Stewart: ‘‘If she knows the guy, she knows he’s had a little help,” she said. ‘‘She’ll think it’s incredibly endearing that he went the extra mile.”
So what can a proposal planner do for a guy? Everything from lining up the Eiffel Tower (the unconfirmed word in nuptial circles is that Tom Cruise hired a planner to help him pop the question there) to making sure the right message runs on the stadium’s jumbotron, to helping write the groom’s wedding toast to his bride. Which is very important, because at an emotional event like that you really want to speak from the heart, even if it’s someone else’s.
Is there anything a proposal planner can’t do? Well, maybe one thing. Stewart seemed unsure whether even a top-notch firm would be able to turn a woman’s ‘‘no” into a ‘‘yes.” ‘‘I guess that would be an event planner/psychologist,” she said. ‘‘Most people in the event-planning business know about making people’s dreams come true, and I’m sure they’d do their best, but I don’t know if they could sway the outcome.”
In other words, members of the team do not write dialogue such as ‘‘What would it take to get you to a ‘yes’?”
Gee, does a guy have to do everything himself?
