Marriage proposal idea
The Calendar Invite
Send a calendar invite dated fifty years out with the question as the title.
- Cost
- $0-40
- Effort
- easy
- Best for
- the partner who runs your whole life out of a shared calendar
The idea
Open your calendar and make an event for a date fifty years from now. Put the question in the title field, add both of you as guests, and set the alert so it lands at an hour their phone is face up between you, the couch at nine, the kitchen table after dinner, the car in the driveway. Their phone lights up. They read a flat little system notification asking them the biggest question of their life.
The joke is the channel. Calendar invites are for dentist appointments and standups, same gray box, same boring font, and this one is not that. Nothing is hidden and nothing has to be found, so they look up in about four seconds and you are already looking at them.
Notifications get eaten by focus modes, muted calendars, and phones face down in a bag, so test the whole thing a week early with a junk event. Make sure their phone is out and awake when the hour comes. If it never lands, open your own calendar, turn the screen around, and hand them the phone.
What to say
“Look at your phone. I know, it's a calendar invite, that's the whole joke, I couldn't think of a normal way to do this. I put it fifty years out because that's how long I'm asking for. Will you marry me?”
Say it slower than feels natural. The pause after it is the whole moment, so let it sit there.
What you'll need
- 🎉a phone with a calendar appFind it
- 🎉takeout for a night with nothing plannedFind it
- 🎉a phone charger so nothing dies at nineFind it
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Step by step
- 1Make the event for a date fifty years out and put the question in the title, nothing in the notes.
- 2Add both of you as guests so it hits their phone and not just yours.
- 3Set the alert for an hour their phone is usually face up on the table between you.
- 4A week early, send a junk invite from the same account so you know what the notification looks like when it pops.
- 5Borrow their phone for something ordinary and check that calendar alerts are on and focus mode is off.
- 6Pick the room and get there early. Put your own phone away.
- 7When it buzzes, say nothing and let them read the whole thing.
Plan the rest of it
Full Blueprint
Want the whole thing planned down to the minute?
The idea above is the shape of the day. The Blueprint is the rest of it, built around your person and the place you picked.
- A run of show with real times, from the morning until the toast
- The speech, written in your words, with the part to memorize marked
- A shot list for whoever is filming, so they know where to stand
- A supplies checklist with what to buy and when to buy it
- A rain plan, because outdoor asks lose to weather more than anything else
Building the plan is free. The Blueprint is $14.99, added to the plan once you have one you like.
Plan one like this, built around your person
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