Get help on the way to ‘yes’
Proposal planner can provide the ‘wow’ factor
Creating that special moment before “I do” just got a little simpler.
There isn’t an app for it, but there is a professional planner willing to turn your great idea for a marriage proposal — including fireworks or flash mobs — into reality. .
Crystal Adair-benning, a Toronto event planner began offering proposal planning services three years ago.
She sees it as a natural extension of her event planning. “I kind of wish in some way I had a better story that I can tell people about, so I really wanted to give that to people.”
But she started doing it seriously only after she was successful at helping a few friends. The service has taken off in the past year and a half. She planned 20 proposals in 2011 and four so far this year.
“I think we can credit Youtube for this,” said Alison Mcgill, editor-inchief of Weddingbells magazine. The site has been a valuable vehicle in capturing highly creative proposals, she said, and upping the ante for potential proposers.
“Seeing this type of service crop up is not entirely a surprise,” she said. People just want to be unique. She uses a popular stop-motion photography Lego proposal as an example.
“I have to give it up to the guys, they’re really going the distance for proposals these days,” she added. But some of them need help to make it happen. That’s where Adair-benning steps in.
Wearing a bright turquoisestriped shirt, keen smile, dark glasses, with a white ipad, Adair-benning is a bright spot in the grey and brown winter. She offers two services in her proposal planning. After an initial meeting with groomsto-be and developing a sense of what they’re looking for, who they are and who their potential fiancée is, she creates a plan with a few proposal options. The client can take that and run for the initial fee of $500 or they can have AdairBenning plan the proposal all the way through to the “Will you . . . ?”
The full package is usually a twoto-three month process and has cost the more extravagant clients up to $10,000. But not everyone wants a planner involved in this most intimate of moments.
Kristin Jansen and Mark Wood got engaged after a hike at Jansen’s cottage near Muskoka. At the top of alookout point they’d been to often, Wood got down on one knee and asked. It was intimate, private and exactly suited to them. He planned it himself.
“I think I’d be a little bit disappointed,” Jansen said, if she found out someone had planned the proposal. It might take away from the memory.
She said she’d want Wood to be secure enough in the relationship and know enough about it to plan something on his own. Having outside help would mean “It’d be somebody else’s engagement, not ours,” said Jansen. “Trying to think of an idea ahead of time, as much as it was nerve racking, it was fun,” said Wood. He knew if there were any mistakes it would be part of the story. And for them it’s about the stories and the memories. This is perhaps why Adair-benning’s services are confidential. Brides-to-be rarely find out about her involvement in one of the most special memories in their lives. “Some grooms-to-be don’t want the bride-to-be thinking that they didn’t put in the time or the effort to create this magical proposal.” She meets them in coffee shops and public places, but most of the planning and coordination is via phone and email. She helps with logistics. So she’ll hire the orchestra or rent the hot air balloon. She specializes in unique and often detail- heavy engagements. But she says her No.1proposal request is for help with private space, classic romance and intimate proposals. She can do Youtube, but booking a venue and making it unique to a couple is the standard.
“I upgrade the typical,” she said. The market for her admittedly unusual service remains small. “The engagement planner is not for everybody,” said Adair-benning. Her services are often used by busy business professionals or international clients who have partners living in Toronto and don’t know the city very well.
“I think the person who’s hiring them is trying to step it up a notch,” said wedding expert Catherine Lash. “This is the type of service that works for people who have visions or grand plans, but aren’t executors.”
It’s also not going to be a big money maker for any planner — AdairBenning is one of the few in Toronto and it’s just 20 per cent of her business. But it’s definitely not a trend, she said. “It’s just going to exist,” said Lash.
Adair-benning says she’s never had anyone say no after one of her proposals. Usually by the time someone goes to a proposal planner they’re confident the person will say yes and it’s just a matter of figuring how they’re going to do it. “Generally these are guys that want to go above and beyond for that major ‘wow’ factor,” she said.
While she has to pay the bills, Adair-benning also gets satisfaction from her work.
“When we execute a proposal and it goes well and it’s something amazing and beautiful, it’s just heartwarming for me. It’s that little thing that I can go to sleep at night going, ‘She said yes. They’re going to start off really well together.’ ”