We never get sick and tired of hearing stories of popped questions, sparkly engagement rings, squeals of surprise, and tears of joy. Whether they're intimate unexpected surprises or flashy manifestos, Hollywood's finest knows the perfect recipe to an epic proposal story and we can't help but reminisce on some of these moments.
First off, LET'S BE REAL: Yes, celebrities may have access to insanely expensive engagement rings and the most beautiful travel destinations in the world, but we have to assume that celebrities feel the same amount of anxiety, excitement, and terror when it comes to proposing to their significant others.
Right?
Before the luxuriant wedding ceremony and to-die-for honeymoon comes the act of "popping the question".
Here are six of our favorite celebrity engagement stories.
Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka
In 2007, David Burtka asked Neil Patrick Harris to marry him with a sweet and simple proposal that proved that thoughtful, intimate moments can be among the most special. On the way home from an event, Burtka asked their limo drive to pull over—on the exact street where they pair had first met. He got down on one knee and proposed right then and there.
On Sunday in 2020, the couple celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary. And to commemorate the day, Burtka shared a loving tribute to his husband on Instagram with a photo from their wedding.
"Six years ago today @nph and I got hitched. Thanks for dancing into my heart. I can't believe you stuck around after all these years of me annoying you. 😂. You have made my heart complete. Thank you for the best times of my life."
On Sept. 6, 2014, they wed in Italy after getting engaged in 2007.
"Six years ago in Italy. Perhaps the happiest day of my life. Since then, thousands of memories. No regrets. Thank you, David, for both creating and rocking my world. I am forever grateful." Harris wrote.
Neil and David have been engaged since 2007, waiting for the Marriage Equality Act to pass in New York. When it did in 2011, Neil tweeted, "David and I did propose to each other, but over five years ago! We've been wearing engagement rings for ages, waiting for an available date."
Harris announced that he and Burtka were expecting fraternal twins, Harper and Gideon, in August 2010. Their daughter and son were born in October 2010 via surrogate. Are you tearing up yet?
Fairytale, PERIOD.
Gideon and his twin sister were born on October 12, 2010. From the moment they were old enough to realize they have famous dads, they’ve embraced the showbiz spotlight.
Not only does Gideon make tons of appearances on his father’s social media, but he’s even walked red carpet events with his family. Gideon has yet to make his acting debut, but it seems he may have a chance as a cook when he’s older considering he “eats everything you put in front of him,” David told The New Potato in 2015. “His passion for cooking and eating good food is in his soul." Considering Gideon’s favorite foods are “clams, sushi, octopus, grilled pork, steak, parmigiana cheese, ginger, mint, cinnamon and coconut,” he said his child has the most “incredible” palate.”
Along with her sibling, Harper has been raised in a loving household thanks to Neil and David. Similar to Gideon, Harper is also a fan of cooking in the kitchen. However, David told The New Potato she prefers “briny flavors,” such as “oysters, sardines, prosciutto, capers, duck liver, miso and anything chocolate.”
Neil and David are so proud to be the dads of their kids, so it’s not uncommon for the acting duo to share pics of Gideon and Harper on social media. In honor of Pride Month in June 2021, Neil uploaded a snap of his kiddos posing with a series of rainbow decals on the floor.
“Happy Pride Month! I’m so crazy proud of these two — that they live = in a world of boundless possibility — it just makes our heart swell and our smile grow,” the Smurfs actor captioned the pic. “Celebrate your truth this month. There’s a lot of good out there.”
Hilary Duff and Matthew Koma
The newlyweds, who share 14-month-old daughter Banks, were first linked in early 2017. Duff also shares son Luca Cruz, 7½, with ex-husband Mike Comrie. I think this is one of our all time top favorites yet.
How it happened according to Duff:
"When Matt proposed to me, we were living in New York and I was working on a TV show,” she explained. “I’d had a very long day, so he was like, ‘Let’s go on a walk. You’ve had a long day, let’s just get out and chat and catch up. There’s this new park I want to take you to. So we go, we find this gorgeous park, Dumbo Park, and he presents me with this book that he said he’s been working on for a while," Duff continued. "He’s like ‘It’s our story’ and he had this amazing guy, Shane, do all of these illustrations.
And he was like ‘We are going to forget things along the way so we need to constantly fill this out so our kids can know our story.’"
When Duff reached the last page, there was a little compartment that she peeled open to reveal a gorgeous engagement ring.
SWOON
Duff: "So I get to the very last page and there’s a little piece that I have to lift up,” she continued. “It was an orange. We call each other ‘half-orange,’ — like, ‘You’re my half-orange.’ And that’s just an inside thing that no one would understand. But it was a little orange sketched on the page, and I lifted it up and my ring was inside.”
“Writing my vows was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, honestly,” she admitted. “It’s hard to have five minutes to tell someone all that they mean to you and all the things that you love about them and why, and what it means moving forward to make this kind of commitment. It was really hard.”
“Marriage is such a huge commitment and marriage is not always easy,” she added. “I think sometimes getting to remember the specific day where we said these specific things throughout the course of our lifetime — things like the dress, and handwritten vows and all of those other tokens of your love and your dedication and your promise.”
“It was so sweet. It was so sweet. He got down on one knee and he’s like 'I forget everything I’m supposed to say but you’re my best friend.' It was so sweet."
Emmy Rossum and Sam Esmail
Emmy Rossum opened up about the awkward proposal she received while sitting NAKED in the bathtub.
While appearing on an episode of Chelsea Handler’s Netflix talk show, “Chelsea”, the “Shameless” star revealed that her fiance, “Mr. Robot” creator Sam Esmail, popped the question in August 2015 while she was sitting under pile of soapy suds. So what happened here?
Esmail legitimately had their love story printed in a FAUX version of The New York Times's "Modern Love" section, which they read together every weekend. But when Esmail asked Rossum to read it to him, it didn't go quite as well as he'd planned. "I said, 'I'm having a back spasm. I'm actually going to take a bath and have a glass of wine, but if you really want to hear it I'll read it to you from the bathtub,'" Rossum told Vogue.
“I happened to be in the bathtub when it happened,” the actress recalled. “And then I realized that it was happening. And then I got out of the bathtub because I didn’t want the story to be that I was in the bathtub when it was happening. And then I got cold as it was still going on, got back in the bathtub because the stories are quite long. And then by the time I finished the story he was down on a knee in the bathroom, with me in the tub.". So, it was a comedy of errors, but it all worked out.”
Rossum went on to say that while she wasn’t always one to dream about this moment as a little girl, she has spent quite some time thinking about marriage in itself. She explained, “I was more excited by the idea of the concept of marriage, and kind of togetherness with the person and unity.”
Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady
When Tom Brady got down on his knees to propose to Gisele Bundchen, she yelled at him to get back up.
LOL
Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen are each other's biggest fans. When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback is on the field, Gisele is never too far behind in the stands. And Tom is equally supportive of his supermodel wife.
In December 2006, a mutual friend set them up on a blind date. Gisele told Vanity Fair that she knew Tom was the one from their very first date. "I knew right way — the first time I saw him," she said. "The moment I saw him, he smiled and I was like, 'That is the most beautiful, charismatic smile I've ever seen!'" The supermodel also shared that she and Tom have not gone a single day without speaking since they first met.
The story behind the quarterback and supermodel’s engagement that has been repeated on the internet by multiple publications was that Brady proposed inside their apartment surrounded by white roses, champagne, and Bundchen’s parents.
According to Bündchen, “When he proposed to me he made up this whole story about how my apartment was flooding. And I ran over there to try to fix the situation, and when I got there, the whole apartment had candles and rose petals everywhere,” Bundchen said. “And then he went down on his knees and I’m like ‘get up!’ because he’d just had surgery and had like three staph infections. I’m like, ‘what are you doing?!'”
“And I’m like, ‘Get up,'” Bündchen continued, fake-yelling, “cause he just had surgery and had three staph infections. I’m like ‘What are you doing?!’ He’s like, ‘I gotta go on my knees.’ I’m like, ‘No, no, no! Get up, please.’ So, and here we are.”
Their 10th Anniversary Instagram Posts:
Brady:
Bündchen:
A little over a decade later, Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen are clearly still crazy about each other! The couple who just celebrated their twelfth wedding anniversary on Feb. 26:
“Today is our twelfth anniversary and all I have to show for it are three beautiful babies and a husband I just can't stop kissing"
Now scroll and melt:
NEVER Stop Kissing
George and Amal Clooney
Clooney's proposal to Amal turned into a romantic comedy of sorts when he couldn't get his sweetheart to sit still long enough for him to pop the question. When he finally caught Amal's attention, Clooney instructed his about-to-be-fiancée to light a candle with the box of matches sitting behind her. "She reaches around, pulls out
the box, and I've got just the ring sitting in
there," he explained on The Ellen DeGeneres
Show. "She pulls it out and she looks at it and she's like, 'It's a ring'—like as if somebody had left it there some other time!"
As far as celebrity power couples go, George and Amal Clooney are right up there at the top of the Hollywood heap. But it wasn’t so long ago that George was better known as one of America’s most notorious bachelors. After years of flying solo following his 1993 divorce from Talia Balsam, the Ocean’s Eleven star finally met his match in 2013, falling head over heels for a Lebanese-British barrister who would give him a
new lease on life.
"There is no question that having Amal in my life changed everything for me,"
George told CBS Sunday Morning of his wife in November 2020. He continued:
"It was the first time that everything that she did and everything about her was infinitely more important than anything about me."
XOXO TEAM LOU LOU
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