Pre-packaged Proposals.

A friend of mine sent me this link. I was, in short, appalled. Apparently, pre-packaged proposal deals are all the rage.

Call me a romantic idealist - Yahoo!'s personality quiz did - but I like to think a proposal is something that a person needs to come up with him/herself. (I include both pronouns since I am an equal-opportunist.) Doesn't it take the magic away to have a person named "Jenifour" (and speaking of which, I abhor pretentiously spelled names that then require mispronunciations) plan out that big event? Jenifour's website provides package deals for proposals ranging from luxury cars to rose-bedecked hotel suites to - you guessed it - dinner at la Tour Eiffel. I'm all for lush romantic gestures, but I think there's something stunningly hollow about paying someone else to plan out, even script, what amounts to one of the most important and life-changing decisions you'll ever make.

And this doesn't even take into account the possible ramifications of spending $5,000-$25,000 on a proposal. First of all, if you lay down that kind of cash, how can you afford the wedding, which in today's society will cost you the average of $27,000? I'm sorry, but I think spending $50,000 on getting married is silly when you can buy a beautiful new 2008 Mercedes SLK-Class convertible for that, which will, with today's divorce rates, likely remain enjoyable far longer.

And secondly, won't this raise expectations to the level where they cannot possibly continue to be satisfied? Staging an entire Broadway musical themed around your proposal may be dashingly romantic, but I challenge anyone to top that for their ten-year anniversary gift. I think this is a form of setting oneself up for failure, by establishing the idea that everything in marriage must be so giddily ideal that when it fails to be - as it inevitably will - and you realize that they really don't know how to put the damn toilet seat down, you start looking for the next person who'll shell out five grand to pop the question.

Another of Jenifour's (and every time I see that, I want to type Jenifive) packages is the "sexy nurse" role-play. The reasons why paying someone else to set up a role-playing sex game is disturbing are numerous, but I particularly thought so of this quote: "Since people have fantasies of their lovers in an assortment of roles and costumes, please feel free to interchange your event to include: maid, stripper, spy, flapper, school girl, milk maid, Jessica Alba, etc."

Jessica. Alba.

Talk about unrealistic expectations...