The Most Epic Celebrity Proposals Ever

Eva Longoria & Jose Baston

Eva Longoria's boyfriend Jose "Pepe" Baston had a major surprise planned for her during a romantic trip to Dubai — and she almost missed it because she was sharing it with her followers!

"He planned for like six months. It was in the Dubai desert," she recalled on Conan O'Brien's show. "There were camels and falcons ... I was Snapchatting 'Oh my God, I'm in the desert! Oh my God, I'm on a camel! Drinking champagne in the desert!' And then I see rose petals and I was like, 'I should probably stop Snapchatting this.' It started to dawn on me: 'Something is happening.'"

Orlando Bloom & Katy Perry

On Valentine's Day 2019, Orlando Bloom went all-out (and up!) to ask Katy Perry a very important question. A few days after the couple got engaged, the "Roar" singer appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and dished on Bloom's helicopter surprise that ended with a ring on her finger.

"I thought we were going to go see some art after dinner but we pulled up to a helicopter," Perry recalled.

The singer said she loved his "very sweet" plan, despite not everything going to plan: To distract his fiancé-to-be from the ring he was pulling out, Bloom handed her a note, but as she was reading, chaos ensued.

"So I'm reading [the note] but I'm hearing the champagne is broken and the bottle's everywhere," she explained of the scene inside the helicopter. "He's pulling out this box that's too big for his coat pocket, rips his coat pocket and his elbow goes into the champagne."

Luckily, the kerfuffle didn't interfere with her enthusiastic "yes" or their safe landing on a rooftop in Los Angeles, where Perry's friends and family were waiting to celebrate their engagement.

Josh Duhamel & Audra Mari

She's sending out a yes, I guess! Josh Duhamel relied on the tide (and a little help from the hotel concierge) to deliver his proposal to now-wife Audra Mari, planning a sunset beach stroll at the same time as a message in a bottle containing the big question washed ashore.

Ryan Lochte & Kayla Reid

Ryan Lochte also went the airborne route when he proposed to his now-wife, Kayla Reid, surprising her with a helicopter tour of Los Angeles before proposing on bluffs looking over the Pacific Ocean during sunset in October 2016.

The Olympian shared a photo of him post-question-pop on Instagram showing the two of them kissing on said bluffs (with her ring on full display). Reid posted a similar photo on her account too. "Speechless. Absolutely beautiful. So in love with YOU," she said in the caption.

Ludacris & Eudoxie Mbouguiyengue

It's no surprise the rapper's now-wife "said 'HELL YES'" to his high-flying proposal, in which the two flew in a private jet over a field with the words "Eudoxie will you marry me" projected on the ground.

But what really put this engagement over the top? The two got married the same day he proposed. "Why wait?" he wrote in a follow-up post.

Russell Wilson & Ciara

Russell Wilson's romantic proposal to Ciara in 2016 wasn't your average destination engagement. The NFL star upped the stakes before he popped the question: Wilson swept the singer away on a mystery vacation without any hints to where they were headed.

Instead, they played a game of "travel roulette," meaning the quarterback gave his future wife 30 possible destinations in the world and had her guess their destination. "She was shocked when they landed in the Seychelles at the exclusive resort North Island," a rep for Ciara told PEOPLE at the time.

Once they were they'd arrived at the tropical spot, Wilson surprised her again when he knelt down and asked her to marry him.

"She said Yes!!!" he captioned an Instagram video commemorating their engagement. "Since Day 1 knew you were the one. No Greater feeling #TrueLove."

John Stamos & Caitlin McHugh

When the Full House star proposed to his Disney-obsessed girlfriend, Caitlin McHugh, he spared no romantic references to the franchise's love-filled films. Their magical moment came together with the help of a fellow Disney fan: the media company's CEO, Bob Iger.

Iger wrote to the actor a month before the Disneyland engagement actually took place. "It was like, the funniest email early in the morning," Stamos told PEOPLE in 2017, shortly after he popped the question. "It was like, 'Hey! I follow you and Caitlin on Instagram. She's really a Disney geek, isn't she?'"

With the help of Iger and Stamos' friend Paul Briggs, who works as an animator for Disney, McHugh received the gesture of a lifetime. "[Briggs] helped me cut together a little movie of all the most romantic moments of the Disney and Pixar Animation [films]," Stamos shared. "It was pretty special."

Dwyane Wade & Gabrielle Union

Dwyane Wade got a little help from his kids when he proposed to Gabrielle Union in December 2013. With a ring on her finger, the Bring It On star revealed the details of their engagement on Good Morning America the following month.

"I was completely surprised," Union said, adding that the pro athlete and his kids, Zaire, Zaya and Xavier (who are now 15, 21 and 9, respectively), planned it together, "as a family."

She recalled how, as far as she knew, the group was simply going to spend the day together. After having brunch, they went to visit their home, which was under construction at the time. While she and Wade were viewing the remodel upstairs, the kids called out to their dad and his soon-to-be fiancé.

"Me and D turn around and they're like, 'OK, now!' And they're holding signs that say, '...Will you marry us?'" she explained on the talk show, adding that she was skeptical of the proposal's legitimacy since they would frequently ask her the question. "So I was like, 'Oh, this is embarrassing! Now they've made signs!'" When she turned to share a laugh with her now-husband, he was down on one knee.

In addition to Zaire, Zaya and Xavier, whom Wade shares with previous partners, the retired NBA star and Union now share daughter Kaavia James, whom they welcomed in 2018.

Alexis Ohanian & Serena Williams

Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and tennis GOAT Serena Williams had been dating under the radar for a bit, which is why his pull-out-all-the-stops proposal was a surprise to some.

Williams announced the news on (where else?) Reddit with a poem, which laid out some of the details of their romantic date: "I came home. A little late. Someone had a bag packed for me. And a carriage waited. Destination: Rome,"

Corbin Bleu & Sasha Clements

High School Musical's Corbin Bleu went from Disney star to Disney fiancé when he proposed to Sasha Clements in front of Cinderella's Castle at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Just after she slipped on the ring (which Bleu presented inside of a glass slipper), the theme park's signature firework show began.

"I'm very excited to begin this next chapter of my life with the woman who stole my heart," Bleu said, confirming their engagement to PEOPLE shortly after the proposal in October 2014.

Kate Middleton & Prince William

Even though Prince William and Kate Middleton had discussed their eventual marriage since striking up a relationship at university, the now-Princess of Wales said she was still surprised when he popped the question. The royal proposal happened while the two were on vacation with friends in Kenya.

"It was a total shock when it came," Kate said in a joint interview they did after getting engaged in 2010. "There's a true romantic in there."

Speaking on his choice of location, the British heir said "it just felt really right out in Africa ... It was beautiful."

Kim Kardashian & Kanye West

Kanye West was committed to the grand gesture during his relationship to Kim Kardashian (which ended in divorce in 2022). One of his most memorable over-the-top demonstrations of love included renting out San Francisco's AT&T Park, putting the words "PLEEEASE MARRY MEEE!!!" on the Jumbotron and getting down on one knee in front of friends and family to give her a 15-carat ring.

Emmy Rossum & Sam Esmail

The Shameless alumna and Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail shared a fondness for The New York Times' "Modern Love" section, so it only makes sense that the romantic column would play a part in their own story.

Speaking to Vogue after her 2017 wedding, Rossum opened up about the way they got engaged two years earlier.

"I do a dramatic reading of it for him. Even if we're not in the same place, I read it to him over the phone," the actress explained of their "Modern Love" tradition. "Then one weekend we didn't read it—I don't remember why exactly—and the following Friday he reminded me that we hadn't. I was actually in kind of a bad mood that day, so I said, 'Oh, well I'll read it eventually.' And he said, 'No, no, no, I think you should read it.' And I said, 'I'm having a back spasm. I'm actually going to take a bath and have a glass of wine, but if you really want to hear it I'll read it to you from the bathtub."

"I began to read the article, and the story is about a director who falls in love with an actress, and I started to think: Huh, that's strange. And then I realized that it was our love story. At first, I freaked out because I thought perhaps he had actually put it in the paper and I hadn't seen it, and everyone knew it but me."

Rossum soon realized that her husband had gone to lengths to ask her to marry him. "Apparently he had called Daniel Jones at The New York Times and gotten their paper template and gotten the people there to print out a whole mock section on the bottom half. He had even put an ad for the Ralph Lauren Ricky Bag," she said. "By the time I finished the story he was down on a knee in the bathroom, with me in the tub."

Pink & Carey Hart

The "So What" singer didn't waste time waiting for her motocross star beau to pop the question first. In fact, she chose a moment that may not have been the most convenient for Hart: while he was competing in the 2005 Pro 250 class finals in Mammoth, California,

As Hart turned into his third lap of the race, she showed him a pit board reading, "Will You Marry Me?" When he kept on driving, Pink held up another sign that said, "I'm serious!" Her clarification worked, too, because her now-husband halted his motorcycle to accept.

Maksim Chmerkovskiy & Peta Murgatroyd

There's no better place for Dancing with the Stars pros to get engaged than on the dance floor, which is exactly where Maksim Chmerkovskiy proposed to Peta Murgatroyd in 2015.. In fact, he got down on one knee in the middle of their performance in Miami.

Under the gazes of the audience and their fellow Sway dance show stars, Chmerkovskiy told his fiancé-to-be, "I'm in love with you, and I will be in love with you for the rest of my life."

He summed up her reaction with an Instagram post from the moment later that night. "She said 'yes,' he wrote in the caption.

Tara Lipinski & Todd Kapostasy

The professional figure skater was in for a thoughtful surprise when she and her then-boyfriend, Todd Kapostasy, headed for after-dinner drinks at New York City's famed Plaza Hotel. After she said "Yes," Lipinski detailed her fiancé's proposal on Instagram, sharing that he capitalized on her love of "holiday window displays" to make the moment perfect.

"He said there was window there he thought I'd like to see....he somehow convinced the hotel to let him take one of their displays over and this painting of him proposing to me in front of my home in California was inside," she wrote along a photo stitching together a picture of the painting and a picture of the couple. "By the time I turned to him he was on one knee....this is one surprise and Christmas that I will never forget."

Kourtney Kardashian & Travis Barker

Because every moment with a Kardashian needs to be camera-worthy, Travis Barker planned a beachside proposal at sunset with candles and approximately one gazillion red roses.

Days after Barker proposed, Kardashian shared more pictures of their romantic moment on the beach on Instagram, writing, "I woke up all night thinking it was a dream."