They were the couple we couldn’t get enough of during this year’s series of The Block – gorgeous, down to earth and madly in love. Yet despite calls from across the country for Waz Jones to make girlfriend of three years Polly Porter his wife, the stubborn renovator refused to use the reality show as a platform to propose. There was national outrage.

“It was at a point where I was getting berated by every young girl, every teenager, every mum and every granny on the street, coming up to me and saying, ‘Why haven’t you asked Polly to marry you? What’s going on?’” Waz, 28, laughs, looking at his now-fiancee sitting beside him sporting a huge smile and a dazzling diamond sparkler. “They’d pick up my hand, look at it, realise there was no ring and say, ‘Come on Waz! If you don’t, I will!’” adds Polly, 25. “It was hilarious.”

It’s great she can laugh about it. After all, there can’t be many women who’d find their boyfriend’s reluctance to commit amusing. But Waz says she wasn’t always so understanding. “About 18 months ago, Polly was getting anxious that I was never going to propose. She was really worried that, for whatever reason, it wasn’t going to happen. I had to explain to her that I wanted to be as excited about the engagement as she was, that I had no intention of marrying anyone else, but that I wasn’t ready to get married just yet.” “After that, I relaxed a bit,” Polly adds.

“I guess I knew then that it would happen. Waz said, ‘Let’s just relax and enjoy having a good time together.’” Fast forward 18 months, and they’ve done just that. After Polly was fired from The Celebrity Apprentice Australia, the couple took a well-deserved break. Spending some of their The Block prize money – they pocketed $115,000 – on a holiday, they jetted off late last month to Thailand with good friends and fellow The Block contestants Rod and Tania Walsh and their sons, Jye and Daniel. While an international holiday seems the ideal time for Waz to drop to bended knee, Polly says the idea hadn’t entered her head.

See Polly's beautiful ring plus find out how Waz popped the question in this week's Woman's Day on sale December 12, 2011.