Extreme Proposals: Will You Marry Me at 20,000 Feet?

Feb. 4, 2007 — -- These days, guys can't get away with just getting down on one knee proclaiming their love and asking the big question.

Instead they've got to go big.

Every woman dreams about her fairy-tale proposal, sometimes even before she meets Mr. Right, but when it happens, thoughts of the ring and the dress becomes all-consuming.

The man traditionally has a big responsibility -- the proposal -- and he's got to make it memorable.

That's exactly what Mateo Martinez did. Martinez popped the question at 20,000 feet just as he and his girlfriend were about to sky dive.

"There is no better way to get your heart rate up then jumping out of a plane and proposing to your girlfriend," Martinez said.

Extreme proposals like Martinez's are all the rage. In fact, three out of four would-be brides prefer to be surprised with their proposal.

"People are putting a lot of money into it, beyond buying the ring itself," said Carley Roney, editor in chief of The Knot. "They are putting a lot of money into the proposal and trying to be very creative and inventive."

Andrew Gleason had been dating his girlfriend Andrea Wightwick and was ready to take their relationship to the next level.

So he rented out a theatre and filled it with all of their friends. He arranged for the theater troupe to get them up on stage and act in their skit.

Then, in the middle of it all, Gleason broke character and asked Wightwick to marry him.

"I think that this particular moment is something the world actually wants to see and wants to help them with so they have a leg up," Roney said. "It is the perfect moment to have your celebrity moment."

There have been plenty of those moments. Former NFL player Jason Sehorn proposed to his then girlfriend actress Angie Harmon on "The Tonight Show."

Star Jones was asked courtside at the 2004 NBA All-Star game.

If that's not grand enough, you can always try grabbing the mic from "Good Morning America's" Sam Champion, like Steve Rapetto did.

Rapetto and Camilla Degody are high school sweethearts and came to New York for their anniversary. They waited in Time Square in the cold for hours, but Rapetto knew the payoff would be big.

"My name is Steve Rapetto and I'd like to ask my girlfriend of eight years to marry me," Rapetto said on the show.

"I wanted to do something extreme," he said later. "Doing it on TV is pretty extreme."