What is love? Baby don't hurt me! Don't hurt me, no more.
Love is weird. People talk about it a lot, but I don't really trust it, you know? It's like, a lot of people think they're in love and can eventually grow to totally loath each other. If that's the case, what makes love any more than a giant vulnerability with only fleeting security? I'm just going to take it as it comes and see what happens.
On proposals:
My best friend is a Wedding Photographer and is currently working on this campaign that involves helping men with proposals.
A couple of interesting notes that she found in her research:
80% of women are dissatisfied with their proposals
One of the biggest mistakes men make in proposals is making it a "pissing contest" (i.e. it has to be bigger, better, most impressive, etc)
Most women want proposals that are intimate and tailored to something special between the both partners
If you aren't reasonably certain what your partner's response will be to your proposal, you probably shouldn't be proposing
In the case of the hay bales, I think it depends on the woman. To a lot of us it seems like a lot of work, intimidating, silly, etc. But if the gesture had some kind of special meaning to the woman, then it might be the perfect proposal for her. For instance:
My best friends were married last year and his proposal was perfect for them. They were out at his family's cottage, and he and his brother had painted a bunch of rocks white. Early in the morning, they went out off the dock and set up the rocks in the water to spell "Will you marry me" (a pretty similar gesture to the hay bales, and pretty ridiculously time consuming). His brother went back to bed and with the sun rising over the lake, the male best friend went and woke up his girl friend. In waking her up he was really gentle about it, a nice welcome to morning, and invited her to come sit out on the dock and enjoy the quiet and the sunrise. That kind of peaceful calm is the exact kind of thing that she loves, so she was more than happy to come sit with him. When she got there he was there holding her hand and when she saw the rocks in the water he got down on his knee and asked her himself.
This could be considered at pretty grand gesture, but for her it was perfect. They'd met each other in high school and become close because they were both in the outdoor education program together. They shared a passion for the outdoors and, at that point, had been dating for 6 years. Both of them knew that they would be getting married eventually, but this was a really beautiful way for everything to come together.
Now, if you woke some people up at 5 in the morning to try to get them to go sit on a dock with you, they would probably get pissed off. However, this was just lovely for them.