SWPropose

You don’t have to be a Leonardo Da Vinci in order to stage your very own art gallery marriage proposal. You can pull this off with aplomb even if neither of you are ‘arty’ types. It just requires a bit of thought and forward thinking so here are some points to get you started.

The first thing to do is to have 2 invitations printed inviting you both to an exhibition at a local art gallery showing the work of some old school friend of yours (you can just make a name up). One clever guy from Chicago did just this when he proposed to his girlfriend at Chicago 40000 art gallery. He created his own abstract art using a laser cutter, a heck of a lot of foam core and used a computer to design his piece.

George Aye, originally from Surrey in the UK, made a series of foam letters on poles which when viewed from a certain angle spelled out ‘will you marry me?’ His girlfriend Sara was under the impression that she was there to look at the work of an up and coming artist called ‘Serge Gandaora’ which was actually an anagram of the names George and Sara. The proposal became a huge hit on YouTube, receiving 50,000 hits in just 2 days. Needless to say Sara said yes to this elaborate proposal.

You don’t really need to create a masterpiece in order to get your question across. A man in the USA arranged a gallery after party on the night of his girlfriend’s art show where he had drawn a picture of himself asking his girlfriend Tiffany to marry him. The staff at the gallery were in on the scheme and were only too happy to accommodate him with his secret art gallery marriage proposal. You don’t even need to draw or paint anything really because you could simply write a nice poem or have the proposal incorporated into a poster and have the staff hang it in a specific area of the gallery.

If your budget will stretch you could ask an artist to paint a picture of your girlfriend and then arrange for your local art gallery to hang it for one evening only. Again you could give her a fake invitation to a friend’s exhibition and say that you don’t really fancy going but you feel that you should both make the effort. 

This will completely fool her because she will feel that you are both going out of a sense of duty. Ask the gallery beforehand if you could celebrate with some champagne afterwards and offer to make a donation because of their hospitality. If you can’t afford a professional artist then visit the local schools and colleges and ask the art department if they can recommend a student to undertake the work. You could either pay the student or allow them to use the piece as part of their portfolio.

An alternative to a pre-arranged gallery viewing is to pretend that you are taking your girlfriend out to the movies or for a meal and, when you’re nearly at your destination, suddenly remember that you promised a colleague that you would pop in to their wife’s exhibition. 

Explain that you had completely forgotten but that you have to show your face because he is more senior than you at work. You then take her to the art gallery where you have already prepared everything for your shock proposal. She will be so stunned she will probably forget that you were actually on your way to somewhere else in the first place!