Will you marry me, subject to availability

Under a booking scheme being trialled by a regional parks authority, proposing at the county's most photographed viewpoint would require a reservation, and the reservation would require a place on a waiting list. The list, as of the latest software update, would be measured in years.

Marriage proposals have increasingly become planned, staged events. Many couples hire a photographer for the moment, and a professional proposal-planning trade exists in larger cities. Popular viewpoints and landmarks are busy with proposals, and it is not unusual for several couples to arrive at the same spot at once. Parks, museums and natural attractions increasingly use timed-entry or reservation systems to manage crowds, and photography shoots and small ceremonies in public spaces often require a permit. Wedding venues are commonly booked a year or more in advance.

Version 4.2.1 of the parks authority's booking app would carry three lines in its release notes. ‘Added Proposal as a booking category for the Upper Terrace (fifteen-minute slots, maximum two participants plus one photographer).’ ‘Fixed a bug where two proposals could be allocated the same bench.’ ‘Known issue: the waiting list for Proposal slots currently displays in years; this is not a display error.’ The notes would be signed off by the authority's digital services team, whose previous release had concerned the location of the toilets.

The scheme would follow a summer in which the Upper Terrace had hosted, by the authority's own count, more proposals than sunsets. Rangers would describe couples arriving to find the railing already occupied by a man on one knee, a second man waiting his turn with a ring box behind his back, and a drone circling both. Under the new arrangement, the terrace would be bookable like the authority's wedding-photography lawn, for a fee, in fifteen-minute slots. The first day of bookings would fill the calendar to the following spring. The waiting list would open the day after that, and would not close.

Applicants would receive a queue number and a projected date, recalculated nightly. The form would ask for the name of the second participant, a photograph ‘for identification at the gate’, and confirmation that the second participant is not also on the list, a situation the authority's terms would describe as a duplicate booking. A confidentiality setting would suppress the confirmation email, though not the calendar invitation, which several applicants would discover only after it had been accepted. Cancelled slots would return to the list, where they would be claimed, on average, within four minutes.

Martin Reeve, 31, a warehouse supervisor, would hold position 3,412. “The app says August, two years from now,” he would say. “I've told her nothing. I've told her mother, because the mother needed to know why I'd stopped talking about Portugal.” He would check the projected date each morning, before the weather. “It moved forward eleven days last week. Somebody broke up, I suppose.” Asked whether he had considered proposing somewhere else, he would look at the terrace, and then at the car park, and say that he had not come this far to do it by the bins.

An unbooked proposal would be classed as an unauthorised gathering under the terrace's conditions of use, and rangers would be issued a laminated card explaining how to interrupt one. The card would advise waiting for a natural pause. A trade in slots would develop regardless, with holders advertising their August in the group chats of local rowing clubs, and the authority would respond by tying each booking to the second participant's photograph, so that a slot could only be used to propose to the person it was booked for. “You can sell your slot,” a ranger would explain to a customer at the gate. “You just can't sell your fiancée.”

The app would not ask what the answer was, though the confirmation screen would offer a ‘Book again’ button. Leanne Oduya, 29, would have used it. “He said no. Very kindly, on the bench, with the drone still up.” She would have rejoined the list the same evening, second participant left blank, which the form would permit for up to ninety days. “It's just to keep my place,” she would say. “I'm not going to get to the front and propose to nobody.” She would say this in the tone of someone who had thought about it.

Version 4.3.0 would follow in the spring. Its release notes would add Anniversary as a booking category, available only to accounts with a completed Proposal booking, and would allow a couple to reserve the terrace for the same fifteen minutes each year for the next decade, in advance, at a discount. The notes would also confirm that the second participant could now be changed once per booking without losing the queue position, following what the team would describe as user feedback. The known issue would remain open.