Health & Family

Just as romantic splits are getting more public and colorful (see No. 8), so are wedding proposals. The simple knee-bend-with-a-box operation will no longer do. Nor, indeed, will privacy. This year, thanks to YouTube, we saw an unsuspecting woman being handed flowers by strangers until she had too many to hold and her boyfriend appeared in a tux, a New York Times columnist proposing to his girlfriend in a fake movie trailer and, of course, actor Isaac Lamb, who enlisted friends, family and the Bruno Mars song “I Think I Want to Marry You” to make the closest thing to a Bollywood-by-way-of-Portland, Ore., marriage offer, all of which was captured by cameras for public consumption. We wish the new couples well and hope their marriages are as much fun as the proposals — and a little simpler.

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