1. FAKE PREGNANCY

“My friends and parents all think he took me to the street corner where we met and got down on one knee and begged me to marry him. In reality, I told him that I was pregnant and that the kid would have my last name. I wasn’t pregnant, but it did the trick anyway. He gave me a ring, and a week later I pretended I had a miscarriage. He still doesn’t suspect anything.”

—Jen, 27

2. FREE HEALTH INSURANCE

“The fake story: Everyone thinks we met backstage at a Broadway play (he’s an actor, I’m a costume designer). They think we fell hopelessly in love and that he proposed to me in full costume while doing Shakespeare in the Park. The real story: He’s gay, he’s my best friend, and I married him so I could get free health insurance.”

—Bree, 29

3. ROLE REVERSAL

“Everyone thinks he proposed to me. The truth is that I asked him to marry me and he said yes.”

—Katie, 32

4. MELTDOWN AT WHOLE FOODS

“I moved across the country to live with him after a long-distance relationship that had already lasted a year. I didn’t want to waste any more time. Then, after another year of living together when he STILL hadn’t proposed, I threw an absolute screaming fit at Whole Foods. Just collapsed in the aisle crying and made a scene—told him I’d given up everything to be with him, including my family and my business. I said that if he didn’t propose to me right then and there, I was going back home. So he proposed right then and there. But I tell friends he took me to a restaurant in Malibu and while we were walking on the beach after dinner, he pulled out a ring under moonlight and asked me to be his forever. Sounds better, right?”

—Kyra, 29

5. BAD TIMING, FELLA!

“I have a really big job at a huge law firm, and the pressure to perform is so strong, I’m constantly worried that I’m going to get fired. I came home one Sunday afternoon really drunk after having lunch and cocktails with my girlfriends. He proposed to me when I got home and said he was doing it to make me ‘feel better.’ I ran into the bathroom and cried all the makeup off my face. Bad timing, fella! So the next Friday night he took me out to the most expensive restaurant in Manhattan and got down on his knees in front of the whole place. Everyone applauded wildly! So my family and friends know that part, but not the dumb ‘feel better’ part that started it all.”

—Jamie, 29

6. OOOH, HOW ROMANTIC!

“It was a Sunday and he was planted in front of the TV watching football like he does every Sunday. I sat down with him on the couch to make small talk, and at the end of a boring, inane, five-minute conversation, he pulled a ring out his sweatpants and said, ‘I know you hate cheesy stuff, so here.’ Oooh, how romantic! So rather than telling everyone the truth, I actually tell them that he paid for one of those skywriting planes and made his marriage proposal to me that way. I wish he did. Actually, I wish I married a guy who was that romantic.”

—Sasha, 34

7. I’M LEAVING YOU

“Everyone thinks I got a knock on the door one day, opened it, and found him holding a bouquet of flowers standing in front of a string quartet he’d hired to play my favorite Mozart piece for me. In reality, I’d grown tired of him hemming and hawing and saying he ‘needed time’ and had ‘commitment issues’ and ‘wanted to do it right.’ What really happened was that I said, ‘If I don’t have a ring on my finger in a week, I’m leaving you.’ A week later, I had a ring on my finger. Sometimes you have to push people to get what you want.”

—Britni, 30

8. I FAKED A PROPOSAL FROM A GUY WHO DIDN’T EXIST

“We’d been seeing each other for about nine months, the last three of which we’d been living together in a tiny matchbox studio. So I got a female friend of mine to create a fake Facebook account where she was this hot Australian surfer dude who needed to marry an American woman to get citizenship. The ‘surfer dude’ sent me messages where he was coming on hard. He also promised me $50,000 just for marrying him. So I showed my boyfriend these messages and I emphasized how much I really needed the money. A month later, we were married. No one knows about the fake surfer dude or the threat of marrying him. They just think our love naturally ‘evolved’ to the point where my boyfriend proposed.”

—Sarah, 33

9. SUICIDE THREAT

“I’d been in an out of psychiatric clinics since my teens and have been diagnosed as bipolar. I also have no living family and very few friends. I told him that I needed him and was having fantasies of killing myself if he didn’t marry me and make me feel secure. And he fell for it. We told his parents that he did that thing at a baseball game where a marriage proposal comes in on the giant Jumbotron screen. They don’t follow sports, so they had no idea. I’m not proud of what I did, but now I feel secure. Not totally, though—I think sooner or later he’s going to resent me for playing the suicide card.”

—Lynn, 28