Congrats to Artman and Astronuc! That's wonderful to know there are still happy marriages in this world.
I wish my romantic tales had a long happy marriage at the end of them. Perhaps some day.
Okay, I'll tell my tale, but don't be too disappointed if it pales in comparison to some of the others here...mine didn't end in a happy marriage.
It started out at the rehearsal dinner for a friend's wedding. I was the maid of honor, he was the best man, and we'd never met before. He's one of those guys who looks much older than he is, so when I first was introduced, I thought to myself, "great, I've been paired up with some 40 yr old." It started out like a rather normal event. They took our dinner orders, and I ordered the prime rib, rare. He commented, "A woman after my own heart," as he ordered the same meal. Other than that, we seemed like complete opposites, right down to our attire. I was wearing an off-white dress and he was dressed all in black. At some point, someone commented on the humvee we all noticed parked outside the hotel. We have no idea why it was there, but it became the joke of the evening that it was the "get-away vehicle." The groomsmen all donned their napkins over their faces like bandits wearing bandanas and staged a kidnapping of the groom, to which the bridesmaids (led by me) took up our steak knives to bar their escape. I ended up in a mock duel with the best man that ended with me grabbing him from behind and holding the knife to his heart. This was all just play. At some point, I had learned he wasn't really 40, we were the same age, so he was no longer this "old guy," but someone eligible (this was a while ago...40 isn't old anymore). There was a lot more joking around, and then after dinner, the parents and other relatives headed off to bed leaving us young 'uns to continue partying. We headed off to the hotel bar. Nothing too notable happened until he started feeding the other women cherries (yes, it meant what you think it means). I was left out and had begun convincing myself that he didn't even like me enough to include me in his play. Then I don't even know how it happened, but it seemed like everyone else suddenly got tired and headed for their rooms, leaving just the two of us behind. He was waiting to pay the bar tab, and I was drinking water, trying to rehydrate before heading to bed. He got some water too, and we sat there talking and drinking our water until the bar closed and they told us we had to leave. At this point, I was really falling for this guy and really wasn't ready to go to sleep yet (I was still pretty drunk). After agreeing neither of us was ready to go to sleep, we decided to go for a walk, except there was really no place to walk to. The hotel we were staying at wasn't near anything except a convention center, and it was surrounded by nothing but parking lots. So, we just walked in circles around the hotel...I wasn't very steady on my feet, so he was holding me close, and it just felt really right. After a few circles around the hotel, we decided we should sit down somewhere, and found a set of steps to sit on. I snuggled closer and put my head on his shoulder and decided I would be content to stay there forever and told him so. I admitted I didn't think he liked me earlier in the evening and he laughed that he thought I was giving him the cold shoulder. So, after a while of sitting outside in the summer evening, we finally decided it was time to head back in and get some sleep for the few hours we had until we needed to start getting ready for the wedding. He invited me back to his room, but having just met him, I declined (I know, some of you will be so disappointed to learn I'm not that type of gal). I was sharing a room with the other bridesmaids on a lower floor than his room, so I got off the elevator first and headed to my room. And don't you just hate when those swipe cards in hotel doors don't work?! So, I was standing out in the hallway of the hotel, it was some ridiculously late hour of the night or early hour of the morning, and my key wasn't working, and I was trying to decide whether they had locked the door from the inside that I needed to knock and wake everyone up to get in, or if I just needed to go to the front desk and get the key re-swiped. I ended up literally just sitting on the floor in the hallway for a moment to figure this out (between all the drinking and the late hour, this required a lot of effort to decide), when the door to the stairwell at the end of the hallway burst open and the guy I had just met came running out, out of breath. He seemed as surprised to see me still in the hallway as I was to see him reappear when I thought he had gone up to sleep. He explained, he had forgotten to ask if he could get a kiss goodnight.

He didn't think I'd still be in the hallway, but he had to try. Then, when he realized I had been sitting on the floor when he entered the hallway, he asked what was going on, so I explained my key wasn't working, and he just showed up, and it must be fate. We went up to his room together. Though, to his great disappointment, I really wanted to go to sleep. He was the perfect gentleman. I only had with me the clothes I had on, so slept in those, and out of deference to me, he offered to let me have the bed and he would sleep on the sofa in the room. I felt way too guilty to let him sleep on the sofa when it was HIS room, so I pointed out there was more than enough room on the bed for two. Since I stayed in my clothes, he slept in his clothes too (I hadn't asked that of him). I think we did end up cuddling a bit that night, but that was it. I was so amazingly smitten, and he did everything just right. Later that morning, the alarm went off way too early. We got breakfast and then I headed back to the room with the rest of the bridesmaids to get ready for the wedding. I was so horribly hung over and dead tired from too little sleep. I didn't see him again until the ceremony. He was so handsome in his tux! Anyway, fast forward through the ceremony to the reception. We do all the required introductions, speeches, first dances, etc., and then he disappears for a little while and I was wondering what was going on. When he finally returned, he handed me the first gift he ever got me...a packet of aspirin!

I hadn't said a word about how horribly I was feeling after the previous night's partying, but he had noticed and went out hunting for aspirin for me. It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me. We dated for a long time after that.
(At some point, he admitted that the first night we spent together was the most miserable night of his life. It was apparently quite an effort to remain a gentleman when he had every urge not to be, but then I reminded him that if he hadn't been a perfect gentleman, I wouldn't have stayed.)
So, no, it doesn't involve any of the things I always thought a romantic moment would involve...no walks on moonlit beaches, just walks in circles around parking lots; no roses or chocolates, just aspirin. Maybe it's because it wasn't anything like what I expected romance to be that made it so special.
Unfortunately, a few years later, he dumped me for someone else...I'd have kept him forever.