Americans overwhelmingly think that proposals should be simple and kept private - but the taste for elaborate proposals is highest amongst young women
People have often made a big song and dance about proposing to their significant other, but in the age of YouTube the entire world is able to see the huge efforts some people make when they ask someone to marry them. Most of the time we see a loving couple affirm their intention to spend the rest of their lives together, but we can also see elaborate and public proposals backfiring on unsuspecting suitors.
The latest research from YouGov shows that Americans want their proposals to be simple and private. 75% of Americans say that proposals should be simple, while 7% think elaborate ones are better. 70% think that private proposals are better, while 8% think that proposing in public is the way to go.
There is a significant age and gender divide to these questions. Women are more likely than men to want an elaborate proposal, while younger people are more likely than older people to say that elaborate proposals are better. 18% of women under the age of 30 say that they think elaborate proposals are better, while men over the age of 65 are particularly lacking in romance, with only 1% of them saying that an elaborate proposal is best.
Younger people may prefer the elaborate to the simple, but they are more likely to have entered into an engagement after a serious discussion about getting married. 63% of under-30s who have been engaged said that the proposal came after a serious discussion about life together, while 30% said that it was never seriously discussed beforehand. People over the age of 45, however, tend to say that when they got engaged the proposal did not come after a serious discussion about getting engaged. In fact, 53% of over-65s say that they never talked about it before the proposal.
Full poll results can be found here.
