Ladies! In case you hadn't noticed, it's 29 February. Leap Year Day. Which is not only the day on which we try to erase the awful romantic comedy Leap Year from our minds, but also the day on which we women are apparently allowed to propose to our boyfriends. How very kind of society!
So what better way to celebrate both these things than to relive our favourite proposal scenes from our favourite romantic comedies. (Note: we would have included Colin Firth proposing to the woman who doesn't understand a word he's saying in Love, Actually, but we couldn't embed it, actually.)
First up, there's John Cusack proposing to his long-suffering, on-off girlfriend Iben Hjejle in High Fidelity. Sure, it may not be Lloyd Dobler standing outside a girl's house with a boombox - but as Billy Mernit says in his excellent Living The Romantic Comedy blog, this scene's "genius lies in precisely how stupid-guy perfect its seeming anti-romanticism is":
Second up? When Harry Met Sally... In which, beneath a New Year's Eve glitterball, Billy Crystal tells Meg Ryan that he's been doing a lot of thinking and "when you realise that you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody... " Oh, you know the rest:
And third up: Four Weddings And A Funeral. Roll your eyes if you want to - but for 116 of its 117 minutes, Richard Curtis's British blockbuster is pretty darn perfect, so we'll make allowances for what has now become one of the most infamous marriage proposals in romantic comedy history. The only clip we could find has Italian subtitles - so if you've always wanted to know what the Italian is for "Is it raining? I hadn't noticed", well, here you go:
But back to real life now. And if you thought it couldn't match the movies, well, think again. Just take a look at our round-up of the most epic marriage proposals ever on YouTube: