It's a strange thing, marriage. It is strange for all the obvious reasons - the shared bathrooms, the "Till death do you part", the unavoidable doubling of festive-season family obligations - but there is another aspect of marriage that has been puzzling me of late.

At first glance, marriage appears to be an intensely private affair. Besides death and the bathroom, what more could be more private than the decision to bind your life intimately with another for the rest of your natural - or indeed unnatural - life?

Marriage, if it means anything, means the process of creating a world for two amid the world of plenty, and you would think that that is a process so private as to be downright occult. And yet marriage is a public affair.

Marriage is a contract in the eyes of society, and an operation that is not legal or binding unless it has witnesses, so it is public to its very core. On Frasier (SABC3; Monday; 8.30pm) this week Nyles and Daphne married in secret but were not allowed to feel married until they had played out the ceremony in front of their families.

Marriage has nothing to do with the relationship between two people, but rather the new arrangement between the couple and society. All the same, there is such a thing as being too public.

I watched in some astonishment the recent series Marry Me (SABC3; Fridays; 6.30pm). An Australian documentary show, it recorded the unusual and innovative ways Australian men devise to pop the question. I am not entirely sure why the modern man feels obliged to pop the question in unusual and innovative ways.

Is it a question that has been popped too many times before? Is it a question so lacking in originality and excitement that it needs to be dressed up in bells and whistles and sleight of hand? It used to be that men of my generation worried about being able to afford a ring, and then worried about choosing one that would be neither so garish nor so modest as to be thrown back in their face.

Nowadays they have to lie awake in their solitary bachelor beds fretting about devising a suitably intricate proposal routine.

I remember when a ring slipped surreptitiously into a glass of champagne or a half-eaten apple strudel was considered hot stuff, but consider Stephen, a Melbourne bloke we met on the show. Stephen was keen to marry Donna, but perhaps fearing that he was not enough to clinch the deal on his own, he set to work on presentation.

"Donna and I came together because we both like movies," mused Stephen, a little obscurely, "so I decided to make a movie to propose to her." Donna and Stephen's other shared enthusiasm is model aeroplanes, but I think Stephen's choice was the right one.

A proposal in the shape of a movie is in some respects more romantic than a proposal scrawled on the underside of a small plastic Messerschmidt. Mind you, the Messerschmidt would have had the inestimable advantage of being private.

Having made his celluloid proposal in the form of a movie trailer, Stephen then persuaded his local movie house to screen it before a matinee. It was hard to tell whether Donna was pleased when the trailer screened and the houselights came up and Stephen went down on one knee in front of the audience.

She just blushed, nervously ate a handful of Whispers and squirmed in her seat. I know who wasn't pleased: the rest of the audience. Some people have strange ideas of romance; mine do not include being asked one of the more important questions you will be asked in your life while a roomful of strangers tap their feet, look at their watches and silently hope this isn't going to take too long.

In fact, I wouldn't have thought a collection of strangers would be helpful to romance at all. Marriage may be by its nature public, but surely the moment of asking and answering is best kept to that space for two you are forging between yourselves.

On the same show we met Maurice and Maureen. Maurice's shrewd plan was to take Maureen to the aquarium then sneak away, only to reappear in the shark tank, holding a marriage proposal written on a piece of laminated cardboard.

It was fortunate for Maurice that Maureen nodded her agreement. You don't want to be broken-hearted in front of strangers and surrounded by man-eating sharks.

Surely a public proposal just prolongs the agony of uncertainty. It would take a very self-possessed young lady indeed to hand a fellow his hat and coat and point coldly to the door with members of the public looking on. A public proposal is almost guaranteed a yes; but the question will still have to be asked behind closed doors.

But while some people use proposals and marriage as their opportunity to seize a moment in the public eye, it is harder to excuse those who are already there.

Why oh why do I have to watch footage of Prim Reddy's wedding every time she has a shift as a continuity announcer? Even if I cared about Prim Reddy's wedding - and surely I can't be alone in my thundering indifference - it seems cruel treatment to have to face it week after week. Not even her family members will be expected to watch it as often as I have.

Every Monday night, there it is, with Prim's simpering voice-over like a cheese-grater being rubbed against my spine.

"The reception was a very intimate affair," gurgles Prim, for all the world as though any moment being foisted upon the faceless South African public can be described as "intimate", without "intimate" entirely losing its meaning.

If Prim Reddy's personal moments are what SABC3 considers to be good television, I can only hope she does not have a baby any time soon.