Bride-to-be defends fiancé after he proposes using piece of notebook paper: ‘As long as you’re happy’

‘Unique and memorable to be sure,’ she said of handwritten proposal note

A woman has defended her new fiancé over his decision to propose using a torn-out piece of notebook paper after the simple proposal method sparked a debate on social media.

This week, Erica Murphy, who lives in Atlanta, Georgia, tweeted a photo of her new engagement ring and the note left by her future husband Monta Homes, in which he’d asked her to marry him, on Twitter. In the post, Murphy revealed that she’d encountered the note after walking into her bathroom.

“So it’s been an amazing year with my guy. This morning before I left for work he left this in the bathroom for me to find. I said YES!” Murphy captioned the photo, along with the hashtag #FutureMrsHomes.

In the photo, a black box holding an engagement ring was placed on top of a piece of white lined paper, which read: “Will you marry me?” in pencil.

The tweet, which has since been viewed more than 114,000 times, prompted mixed reactions in the comments, with many questioning the unique proposal method, while others were critical of Homes’ choice to use a piece of notebook paper.

“Umm a note? Torn out like that?” one person asked, while another said: “I would have packed my things and left.”

Others suggested that Homes should have asked Murphy to marry him “face-to-face”.

“Is he shy? Lol. Hope this proposal was exactly what you’ve dreamt of,” someone else wrote. The tweet prompted a response from Murphy, who revealed that her fiancé is not shy, but “struggled” with how to propose to her.

“Not shy but I do think he struggled with how to do this,” she wrote. “Big step for a guy. LOTSA pressure. I’m overjoyed he wrote the note.”

Not everyone was critical of the proposal, however, as some said that the “simplicity” of the note made the couple’s engagement even more “romantic”.

“That needs to be framed and hung on a wall. Simplicity can be romantic!” one person tweeted, while another said: “Sweet. Sincere. Genuine. Simple. Old Fashion. I love it. I would cherish that paper and have it framed! Congratulations! I wish you and The Mr the very best!”

Someone else wrote: “As long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters.”

After the note went viral, Murphy spoke to Today about the proposal, where she addressed some of the negativity and clarified that her future husband’s proposal was not “an afterthought”.

“I do want to set the record straight,” Murphy told the outlet. “This man flew in from Detroit to do this. This wasn’t an afterthought.”

Murphy then revealed that, despite the criticism from outsiders, she thought the proposal was perfect - something that Homes also knew before he popped the question.

According to Murphy, who works as a journalist, she’d had a rough day at work the day her now-fiancé had flown in for a visit to celebrate their one-year anniversary. “I had a really rough day the day before,” she recalled, adding that a day of covering a Confederate memorial event had left her “really exhausted”.

When she got home that night, Murphy said she and her long-distance partner began bickering as a result of her bad day, with her feelings of irritation with her partner continuing the next morning when he woke her up a half hour before she was supposed to wake up for work.

However, Murphy said she and Homes ended up making up once he’d returned to bed, at which point she said they’d “just laid there for a while, talking and laughing a little bit” before she had to get up and go to work.

Once Murphy got out of bed at 5am, she went into the bathroom, at which point she saw Homes’ proposal note.

“This is the type of person I am,” he told Today, adding: “I want to catch her when she least expected.”

According to Homes, he considered going the more “Instagrammable” route with the proposal, but ultimately decided that he liked the handwritten note idea “better”.

As for how Murphy felt about the simple method, she told the outlet that she found it “very sweet” and “heartfelt”. She said the note also means she can reflect on the proposal now that Homes has returned to Detroit.

In response to one tweet, which read: “I’ve never seen something like this. Unusual but hey! To each their own,” Murphy added: “It was very sweet! Unique and memorable to be sure.”

The Independent has contacted Murphy for comment.