You’ve been dating awhile, and you feel it’s come time to pop the question to your sweetie – ye old “will you marry me?”  This is a big event for everybody involved, and you want to do it just right, but the question is how? Do you go understated, and take your bride-to-be to the first place you kissed, bend down on one knee and gently take her hand, professing your undying love? Or do you take it public, and announce your loyalty to the only woman you love on the Jumbotron at a sports game, where there will be thousands of witnesses? Whatever you decide, how you propose might be the difference between a yes and a no.

Ultimately, no one wants to be embarrassed when they ask for an eternal hand in marriage, but it happens. Especially if you choose to do it in front of the bride’s entire family after a funeral, like John S, from Bridgeport, Connecticut. After attending the funeral of his fiancé’s grandmother, and right after graveside service, John chose that time to kneel down on bended knee, take the hand of his lover, and profess that he wanted to be with her “until death do us part.” Needless to say, the mourners were shocked, as was John’s girlfriend, who promptly slapped him across the face, pushed him down, and fled the scene, leaving a hurt and confused John sitting in his suit by the freshly turned grave of Grandma Sylvia.

And if you choose to announce your intentions in front of the world at a Wizard’s game, make sure you’re going to get a definite yes. One romantic Romeo was publicly humiliated on national TV when his girlfriend ran off the court, leaving his arm outstretched, diamond engagement ring in hand, after he tricked her into coming down to play a game that she thought she’d been picked for out of the crowd present. That’s not only embarrassing for the unlikely-to-wed couple, but for the people at home that had been thinking of proposing the same way.

A proposal rejection in private hurts individually, but unless you share the story with close personal friends, no one shares in the rejection with you. Taking your love and intent public isn’t for the faint of heart, by any means of the phrase.