Alexey Bykov, 30, right, hugs his fiancee Irena Kolokov after proposing to her by faking his death in a car accident.
One Russian man took his marriage proposal as a matter of life or death. Alexey Bykov hired a movie director and stuntmen to stage a bloody, gruesome faked death — aspects not often associated with the romance and refinement of the average proposal. When Bykov’s girlfriend arrived to meet him, she found herself at the scene of a car crash, with mangled vehicles everywhere. Irena Kolokov then asked a paramedic what happened and learned Bykov had died. When she began weeping over his body, he reportedly jumped up and proposed to her. “I was so cross I almost killed him again, but for real this time,” she said, after saying yes. It was the ultimate in shock and awww.