If you’ve been dating someone for a while and marriage is on both of your minds, you may be thinking of popping the question with the holidays on the horizon. According to WeddingWire, 33 percent of engagements occur between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

That may mean you’re under some pressure.

With any luck, it’s enjoyable pressure. After all, you want the proposal to be romantic, or at least have some sense of whimsy or fun to it, right? But you may not have the budget to whisk your beloved off to Paris, where you can propose at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

So if you’re wondering how to ask the question in a frugal but fun way, perhaps you’ll be inspired by the advice and anecdotes of some real-life couples.

Make the proposal holiday-themed. If you’re planning to propose on or near a holiday like New Year’s Eve or Christmas, ask yourself if you can incorporate the moment into your big moment. For instance, if you propose on Thanksgiving, you could do it while dressed as a giant turkey (on second thought, don’t). Ten years ago, Rikka Brandon, an executive recruiter in Moorhead, Minnesota, says her then-boyfriend and now-husband made the Easter holiday a hallmark of his proposal.

“He filled an Easter basket with plastic eggs that each had something he loved about me printed on a piece of paper inside the egg with some candy,” Brandon says. “They included things like ‘How you make me laugh,’ and much more. At the bottom of the Easter basket was an egg nestled down into the grass. I had been expecting him to propose for weeks, so I knew the ring would be in the last egg.”

It wasn’t. There was just a note that said, “I love everything about you.”

But when a disappointed Brandon looked up her boyfriend, there he was on one knee, holding a ring and asking for her hand in marriage.

Extra planning can really make a difference. Heather Mulae, an executive in Chicago, says her favorite thing to do is go to the zoo. So last December 23, her now-fiancé, Chris Friederich, took her to Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo to see the zoo lights. It was an inexpensive date, given that the zoo’s admission is free, but Friederich gets points for picking something meaningful to Mulae and choosing time when holiday lights are everywhere. But what really impressed Mulae was that he colluded with the zoo’s coordinator.

Near the end of their walk, Friederich directed Mulae to a sign in holiday lights that read: “Will You Marry Me?”

After he dropped on bended knee and proposed, and Mulae said yes, he led her to a table set with champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries. Friederich also arranged for the two to skate on a secluded pond that’s filled with swans during the summer.

“I would have been happy if he kneeled down next to a bench at the zoo, but he put extra thought into it and went above and beyond. I could never imagine a better proposal,” says Mulae, who will be marrying Friederich next year.

The beach is cheap and romantic. Frank Healy, a licensed professional counselor and certified life coach, lives near the beach in Dennisville, New Jersey. On April 4, 2009, he suggested to his now-wife, Janet, that they take a walk on a different beach than usual. Healy arranged it so that they happened upon a heart drawn in the sand next to some Adirondack chairs. Buried under the heart was a plastic pirate chest containing an engagement ring.

When they came upon the heart, Healy handed his girlfriend a shovel. “We uncovered a little plastic pirate chest that had the ring in it. I got down on my knee, proposed and put the ring on,” Healy says. “Our friends gave us a few minutes alone before they came with cameras and a champagne bottle.”

But if you’re going to propose at the beach, think carefully through the details. Healy had a co-worker keep his eye on the spot where the treasure chest was buried, for example, to prevent hijinks like beachcombers with metal detectors discovering it.

The effort is what counts. Even if things don’t go as planned, as long as you have a plan and a solid relationship, you’re probably going to get a yes.

Like Healy, Christopher Hall, a relationship therapist and associate professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, proposed at the beach. His experience didn’t go as well as planned, at least at first.

In 1996, Hall was teaching English in Iwaki City, Japan, when he decided to propose to his girlfriend. “I was a broke teacher straight out of college. The beach was free and just a half hour away,” Hall says.

Along with his girlfriend, Jean, he brought a blanket, a battery-operated radio, two wine glasses and champagne. “Then in a special twist, I would put the ring in the champagne bottle, and when I poured the ring, it would come out into her glass,” he says.

Unfortunately, Hall didn’t think through his plan quite enough, and consulting the weather forecast might have been a good idea. He decided he would pop the question and cork at 10 a.m., but the weather turned out to be, as he puts it, “unexpectedly chilly.” There was also fog.

“I mean, thick, can’t-see-the-water, fog,” Hall says. But he was committed to the plan, so he and his girlfriend groped their way across the sand. Hall set out a blanket, turned on some music and pulled out the bottle of champagne.

Jean looked perplexed. “Why in the hell do you want to drink champagne at 10 in the morning in the fog on the beach?” she asked.

Meanwhile, as a rattled Hall was trying to slip the engagement ring into the bottle, he discovered it wouldn’t fit inside the opening. Then, as if on cue, the batteries on the radio died, and the music stopped. As the two sat there, on the silent, foggy, cold beach, Hall proposed.

“She was stunned, said yes and nothing else mattered that day,” Hall says. They’ve been happily married for 18 years.

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Fun and Frugal Ways to Propose Marriage originally appeared on usnews.com