There are many different ways a man can propose to his girlfriend - you could go all out and spend £220,000 on an elaborate day, you could write love letters for years that contain a hidden message, or you could simply get down on one knee in your living room and pop the question.
Another approach would be to get your girlfriend to unknowingly wear her engagement ring for over a year before proposing. For that is exactly what an Australian man called Terry did.
On their one year anniversary, Terry gave his girlfriend Anna a necklace that he’d made himself. It was made out of Huon pine - a wood native to Tasmania - but little did Anna know there was something much more precious inside.
The necklace contained a hidden engagement ring.
“I had always loved the idea of giving someone a gift where they didn't know its true value until years later,” Terry explained to The Independent.
“After my girlfriend and I had been together for eleven months I decided I wanted to ask her to marry me, but I wanted to do something unique. I also wanted to start doing wood carving and I had this idea for the necklace, so I decided I would give it a go. I found the ring I knew suited her and started working on it.”
For a year and a half, Anna wore the necklace almost every day with no clue that there was something special about it.
“I gave the necklace to her on our one year anniversary and she absolutely loved it. She wore it every day and everywhere we went, and pretty much never took it off,” Terry said.
“There were some occasions where I was really worried; at one point, I thought she was going to trade it with a blacksmith at a market (the blacksmith loved the necklace, and she loved the blacksmith’s work) but luckily I didn't need to crash tackle her.
“My biggest moment of panic was when we went through airport security the first time. I hadn't thought about the fact that she might be asked to put it through the X-Ray, which could have very quickly turned into an airport security proposal!”
But in November 2016, Terry decided to finally pop the question.
On a trip to Smoo Cave in northern Scotland, the true contents of the necklace was revealed.
“I picked Smoo Cave because it was a place we had talked about visiting since we first met, and ‘smoo’ comes from an old Norse word for ‘hiding place,’ so I think I get extra points for that one,” Terry told HuffPost.
How did he do it? Terry asked Anna for the necklace, saying that he wanted to take a nice picture of it propped up on some rocks.
“It had a really small amount of glue holding the two parts together,” he explained, “So I loosened it with a knife quickly before we took the picture (which broke the top part off unfortunately...) and then put it in my pocket ready. ”
Anna didn’t see him break the seal though.
“Oh, I forgot to give you your necklace back,” Terry said to his girlfriend, and as he got the necklace out of his pocket, he got down on one knee, opened the necklace and asked her to marry him.
“She stood there with this completely confused and dumbfounded look on her face, and when she finally worked out what had just happened, she yelled, ‘Yes!’ and pounced on me,” he said.
“It actually took her a couple of moments to understand that the ring had been in the necklace the entire time since I gave it to her. She flipped out - ‘Wait, it’s been in there the entire time?! I could have lost it, you f***ing idiot!’, which was a hilarious mix of happy and angry.”
Terry had set up a camera to take pictures of him and Anna too.
The couple are currently saving up to buy a house, where they hope they’ll eventually be able to host their wedding.
“We are hoping to buy a house with land so we can have the wedding at home with our friends and family, in a very relaxed fashion that we think matches us - rather than having a gigantic, glamorous wedding, which isn’t like us at all,” Terry said.
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