- I'm engaged.
I don't know if I've mentioned that on this channel yet,
but yes, I'm engaged.
Oh, what's that?
No ring.
Oh, wait, I proposed.
What?
I know, shocking, shocking.
The Metro even ran a story about me getting engaged
and calling it a shock proposal, I think because I did it.
So I haven't really talked too much about it
other than on social media, just to be like,
"We're engaged, we're getting married, yay!"
So I thought I would do that today in this video,
and chat a bit about why I did it, how I did it.
And some other thoughts on proposals.
I guess the main reason why, is because feminism,
but also more complicated than that,
but also not more complicated than that.
Why does it have to be complicated?
It's just simple, I just wanted to propose.
Hi, if you're new here, I'm Hannah.
I'm engaged to my partner Dan.
We've been together for three years,
and we're getting married next year,
and I proposed to him in August.
So before we get into the whys and the feminism,
let's just have a good gossip about how I proposed.
How did you do it?
Did you get down on one knee?
Yes, I did, I did get down on one knee.
But it was it was very anticlimactic.
I mean, he did say yes.
So I guess that is the climax.
But it wasn't a big deal, I don't know.
So this is how I proposes, so basically I proposed
using this card game that we both love called Fluxx.
Now Dan introduced me to Flux
at the beginning of our relationship.
One of the first weekends away that we went on together,
within two, three weeks of meeting.
He introduced me to this, and we played it constantly.
And then following that we bought loads more versions.
So we love this game
I have to explain Fluxx a bit to explain the proposal.
Basically it's a game, that the rules change as you go,
depending on what cards you put down.
But ultimately there are goal cards.
This is a goal card.
So you win if you have dreams and money
down at the same time.
Is that dreams?
Yes, dreams and money.
And so there are keeper cards.
So this one is the eye, but then there's loads of others,
including dreams and money.
And so if you have the correct keepers down
when the goal card is also down,
because the goal can change, then you win.
And there's lots of other rules and fun stuff, as well.
I would recommend it's a great game.
One of the things that you can actually do is
you can buy a small pack of blank cards,
and you can write your own stuff on them
to incorporate into a game,
and basically create your own rules,
create your own goals and keepers, and all of that jazz.
And so that's what I did.
And I'm showing it to you in this frame,
because I framed them, because I'm adorable.
And I can't be bothered getting them out
because it was really difficult trying to get them in
and even now they are not perfectly straight.
But basically, I created a little Hannah keeper,
a little Daniel keeper, and then the goal was
Hannah and Dan, and it said Marriage,
but just so you know, marriage isn't a society goal
or at least it is treated as such.
But it's the be all and end all.
This is just my personal goal.
And it said, "Dan, will you marry me?
Aren't I adorable?
So how I did it, with my amazing artistic skills,
was basically I ordered all of the stuff that I needed.
I also ordered him a ring, that is technically a keyring.
So Dan is a big fan of the game League of Legends.
And his favourite champion to play is Poppy.
And so I went on Etsy, and I was like,
can I find a League of Legends Poppy keyring?
And of course I could.
So I bought him that key ring.
I got the Fluxx stuff ready.
I drew out all of the bits.
And then basically for days, I was like,
"Hey, Dan, do you wanna play Flux?"
And he just kept saying no.
He did not want to play Fluxx with me.
And so in the end, he was just sat at his desk,
playing a game, and I was like,
"Dan, Dan, Dan, pay attention to me."
And then put the cards down and then got down on one knee,
and with the keyring, and asked him to marry me.
And he said yes.
He was also very confused.
And I hope you feel bad for not playing Fluxx with me.
I obviously can't show you the keyring right now
because Dan has it on his set of keys,
and he is out, and he needs his keys.
But here's a photo.
There you go.
So it's very chill.
It was very low key.
But it was felt really personal to us
and really personal to him.
And he was surprised,
but not for the reason that you might think.
So now on to,
why I proposed.
#feminism.
But also other things.
To be honest, one of the main reasons was
I was inspired by same-sex couple friends of mine,
who were engaged, who are married,
who've done the whole proposal thing.
And I was inspired by them writing their own rules.
Not having this life script
that is already laid out in front of you,
for you to follow, for you to do.
It's just like, "Hey, you don't actually
"have to make any meaningful decisions in your life
"because your life trajectory is already
"planned out by you, from society."
So a lot of that really made me think.
I don't just want to take this template of a relationship,
which is a heterosexual couple.
Man proposes down on one knee.
Father walks her down the aisle, white dress,
marriage, babies, I don't know.
I didn't want to just to take all of these life events and
just take it as a template and transplanted onto my life.
I wanted every single thing that I decided to do
to be actually what I want,
and be right for me, and be right for us.
And just to make sense, basically,
rather than just doing it because it's easy,
and the option is there,
almost like creating your own options.
And so in all of that thinking, I was like,
Is having the man propose, getting down on one knee,
having an engagement ring.
Is all of that stuff actually important to me?
And I came to the conclusion,
no, it is not important to me at all.
What's important to me is that it's a private moment
that it's personal.
That we actually have a good healthy relationship.
That we have a wedding, and we have a big party,
and we can celebrate with our friends.
I don't even care that much about marriage.
But what I do care about is having children.
And Dan also does care about marriage.
And he wanted to be married before we have kids.
And so I'm just like, cool, fine.
So it was just really taking every single tradition,
every single thing that is expected of you
and just being like, is this right for me?
Is this right for us?
Does this make sense?
Do I actually care about this?
And most of the time, it's like, "Well, no."
So why did I propose then, I don't actually care about it.
Why didn't we just get married?
And the reason for that is something
that Shanboody has talked about.
And I think she is brilliant.
And one of the things that she said
about her relationship with Jared,
and why they got married, was because
it is a symbol and it signifies to other people in your life
and to society, what your relationship is,
and the level of commitment that you have
for each other that you already know.
Shan is clearly a very practical person,
because I love that's it's very practical reasons
to be getting married.
But it totally resonated with me
in terms of the reason for getting engaged.
Because the reason why Dan was surprised,
after he said yes, after we were all happy,
he was like, "I thought we were already engaged."
And it's true, we were.
Before I proposed, we were already planning the wedding.
So the wedding planning had already started
before I had technically proposed.
Before we were technically engaged.
And I agree with him.
I also considered us engaged
because I interpret engaged to be,
you are planning on getting married.
There is a plan to get married,
you intend to marry each other.
And we'd already discussed it,
we've already basically agreed that
we wanted to marry each other.
We'd already discussed dates,
because my parents are away travelling for most of next year.
So we've already talked to our family,
to be like, "Hey, guys,
"when are you going to be in the country?
"Because we're thinking about getting hitched
"and we would like you to be there."
We were already having those conversations
with ourselves, with our close loved ones,
before any proposal.
And so that's why Dan was like,
"I thought we were already engaged."
But the reason why I did it, and so that
we could tell people that we were engaged.
Because like Shan says,
sometimes it's about letting other people know
what your relationship is.
What you already know to be true about your relationship.
Other people might not necessarily understand
unless they see those life script things.
Like, oh, that was a proposal, oh, I get it.
If we just went around telling people,
"Hey guys, we're engaged, we're getting married."
They'd be like, "Where's the ring?
"Oh my god, who proposed?
"How did it happen?"
And we'd be like, "No, we just had a conversation. "
So yeah, I realised it's contradictory, because I'm like,
Oh, we did it in the way that we did.
Because we wanted to get away from societal norms.
But then also, we did it to conform to societal norms.
So that other people would understand our relationship.
And it really is quite a tricky thing to navigate.
I ran some polls,
and ask you guys some questions on my Instagram.
And obviously, these are totally definitive.
These are amazing studies and surveys
that are totally science proof.
I still think it's just interesting to see what people say.
So I asked people,
Do you think men should be the one to propose?
Obviously, I'm not being specific about the gender,
the people in the relationship.
But just, do you think
that men should be the one to propose?
And 22% said yes.
And 78% said, no.
That makes a lot of sense,
because it's a very theoretical, hypothetical question.
And also, I feel like my audience on YouTube,
and also on Instagram are kind of liberal and feminist,
and so probably wouldn't expect the man to propose.
However we then go to the next question.
And this I identified as specifically
for women who are in relationships with men.
Do you want/expect your partner to be the one to propose?
And 67% said yes.
And 33% said no.
Obviously that's not as big of a landslide
than the, do you think men should propose in general.
But I do think it's really interesting that
we're totally fine in theory
with it not being the man that proposes.
But then for a lot of people in their own personal life,
it's like, "Oh, no,
"but I still want him to be the one to propose."
And I'm not judging that at all.
I don't want this to come across in that way,
I just find this really interesting.
But obviously, there'll be a lot of people
who are answering that first question
who aren't women who are in relationships with men?
So the number of people
answering that question is broader.
In the more general first one, the total amount of people
who voted in that, it's like 17 and a half thousand people.
And then for the most specific one,
it was 14,000 people who voted.
I mean, still a lot of people.
Next I asked for same sex couples, who proposes?
But the answers were just, me, and them.
And it's 43 to 57%.
And that pole basically means nothing
because we have no idea,
who the people and what their gender are,
who are answering it and the gender of their partner.
I did ask for people to go into more detail about why.
So I'm just going to read some of these out.
There is no good reason.
I'm just too awkward and would not know how to react.
Whoever feels like it first.
Both, I'd like both.
Really doesn't matter.
Just whoever gets there first, to be honest.
All couples should have a frank conversation
about whether they're ready, then decided to be engaged.
I agree.
Whoever gets there first,
but my partner would really love me to propose.
That's interesting, because you also
should have a conversation about whether
being proposed to or being the one to propose
is also important to you.
Because people will generally have a preference.
And then the next question I asked was,
Engagement ring?
And 80% said yes.
And 20% said nah.
How many people voted in that one?
Same again, that's about 17,000 people
who voted in that one.
And that actually leads me nicely onto the fact that,
oh, I do not have an engagement rate.
However, even though I was the one to propose,
I've made it very clear to Dan,
that I still expect a proposal back at some point.
Obviously, I'm going to say yes.
It's the least pressure proposal of all time.
Because I'm like, I've already proposed,
so you know, the answer is going to be yes.
Although maybe he does feel the pressure
because my proposal was just so damn cute and personal.
Bethan, if you're watching,
help your brother out with a proposal
because I think he might need it.
So one of the things that Dan and I discussed
about being important to us or not
was buying an engagement ring.
And we decided, no, we would rather spend the money
on the wedding, or the honeymoon.
Having like a new expensive engagement ring
is not important to us.
And actually, I technically already have an engagement ring.
Ta da da da.
Can you see it?
So this is actually a family heirloom.
It was given to me when I was 18.
It belonged to my Granny's godmother, I believe.
And it's gold, it's got two diamonds and an emerald.
And when I was 18, I wore this constantly.
I can't remember which finger I wore it on.
I think my fingers have gotten bigger.
Maybe I did just wear on my wedding finger.
But I wore this constantly when I was 18
and when I was at uni, and then
one of the diamonds fell out and it destroyed me
and we got a new diamond put in
and then I stopped wearing it every day
because I was so nervous about losing more gems from it.
But basically I said to Dan,
there's already and engagement ring there,
when you're ready to propose, just use that.
Obviously he's not planning anything,
because I have it with me right now.
I'm just going to wear it for the rest of the video.
Ha ha ha, I'm engaged!
And then I also asked on Instagram,
just please tell me all your thoughts about proposals.
They should never be a complete surprise.
Gotta talk about marriage and your future plans beforehand.
I agree.
Often too over the top these days.
Mmm hmm.
Proposals are way expensive in my opinion,
I'd prefer a meaningful gesture and no ring.
Depends how it's done.
I hope mine will be creative and cute.
I think non-traditional is great,
but for me I'd like it the old fashioned way.
Old fashioned but that is sort of why
it's so charming and romantic.
The reason why I wanted to talk about my proposal
and why I did it.
But then also share some of your thoughts and feelings
on proposals is because there is no one size fits all.
But the way that it has always been traditionally,
makes us think that that is the one size that fits all.
And if that size fits you that is fine.
Go forth, be happy in your proposals,
and your marriages, and all of that stuff.
But think about it.
Just just have a moment to be like,
What is important to me?
Think of all of the things that are involved in proposals,
and marriages and relationships.
And actually strip it down to
what do you actually care about?
What do you not care about?
And talk about that with your partner
and go from there and have a great time.
No judgement here.
But also now I really want Dan to propose soon
because I want to continue wearing this ring.
I mean, I could just wear it if I want,
but got to give him a chance.
I have given him a deadline.
Is that bad?
I was like, "If you don't propose
"at least six months before the wedding
"I'm not marrying you." (laughs)
Is that bad?
Oh, and in terms of how wedding planning is going,
if anyone was interested.
We have a date, we have a venue.
We've booked all of the important things
and now we have to book all of the other things.
Like food, and music, and all of the bits that go in it.
But the exterior like the date, and the time, and the place.
That's all sorted.
And I'm very excited.
Whoo! (laughs)
All right, thank you so much for watching this video.
Please like it if you enjoyed it.
And please tell me all of your thoughts
about proposals and marriage in the comments.
What do you think about it in terms of
what society expects us to do,
versus more personal, different ways of doing it?
Are you in a same sex relationship?
And how do you think that might work out
in terms of proposals there with you.
If you want some more content from me,
I'm uploading every day over the eight nights of Hanukah
over on my More Hannah YouTube channel.
I'll see you over on the More Hannah channel.
Bye