“They were like hysterically crying,” Ms. Bonito said.
Liz Dent and Corey Sunstrom found the open communication that a nontraditional proposal offers alluring as well. Mr. Sunstrom initially wanted to surprise Ms. Dent. But the more they thought about it, the more they found themselves questioning that route.
“We’ve both been married before, and we both have sort of been through the proposal,” Ms. Dent, 34, said. “And I think for us it was like, well, the other way didn’t really work — let’s do something that makes sense for both of us. And I think we both view ourselves as really equal partners and wanted this to be a decision that we made together as a couple and feel like both of our hearts were totally 100 percent in it.”
It took only a little convincing for Mr. Sunstrom, 39, to agree. “We had already decided that we wanted to be together, we wanted to get married,” he said. “So why not just plan a time to do it together, to propose to each other and write down some thoughts and vows to each other and just make it a shared time?”
In February 2023, they bought a bottle of champagne and some appetizers and drove to a lookout point on Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, N.C., which is where they had gone on one of their early dates after starting to see each other in February 2022. They read cards they had written to each other and exchanged rings — he gave her a diamond ring, and she gave him a gold band. They married in November 2023. Ms. Dent currently lives in Washington, where she most recently worked at the Department of Defense, and Mr. Sunstrom splits his time between Washington and Charlotte, N.C., where he works as a financial planner.
Shohreh Davoodi, a freelance writer and content creator and as a social media and website manager, and Jessie Roynon, who works in health care technology, wanted to maintain an element of surprise even though both women had agreed to a dual proposal.
They decided they would propose on the same day in the same place — in Austin, Texas, where they lived at the time. (The couple now reside outside of Denver.) But they kept the rings they had bought for each other a secret.