Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Professional proposal planner reveals what an £800k engagement includes

Daisy Amodio has planned proposals all over the world

Kate Ng
Monday 13 February 2023 10:30 GMT
Comments
Meet the professional proposers who have arranged 3,500 engagements all over the world - and say the super rich spend up to £800k popping the big question
Meet the professional proposers who have arranged 3,500 engagements all over the world - and say the super rich spend up to £800k popping the big question (Nudge Photography / SWNS)

A professional proposal planner has revealed what an engagement commissioned by a super-rich client involves, at the cost of £800,000.

Daisy Amodio, who runs Proposal Planners from Balham, London, has arranged 3,500 proposals all over the world, including in London, Paris Dubai, New York and Zanzibar.

The 40-year-old business owner’s packages start from £1,000, but bespoke packages are priced on how extravagant the customer’s requests are.

One of Amodio’s priciest proposals cost £800,000 and took her seven-person team all over the world.

“The client wanted his face beamed on the Eiffel Tower but this wasn’t possible, so I called Disney Paris and we hired the castle out to have fireworks,” she explained.

“They hired a private jet to do something different on every continent. In Times Square he wanted to do a prank, so we had dressed up NYPD cops and got them to say, ‘You’re illegal, show us your passport’, and then all the screens changed to photos of them.

“The proposal finished in Niagara Falls with their faces and ‘Will you marry me?’ beamed onto the water.”

The proposal planner, who claims she has a “100 per cent success rate” and has never witnessed anyone say no, said most of her clients are straight men who want beautiful views, candles and violinists.

Daisy Amodio, a professional proposal planner (Courtesy Daisy Amodio / SWNS)

Her most memorable proposals include abseiling down a cave in the Lake District to set up a candlelit dinner, a prank drug arrest, a porn star proposal and a cat-themed ceremony.

“Essentially our job is making people happy and helping them make the first major milestone in their life,” Amodio said.

“It’s a major deal, there’s a quite a lot of pressure. We just create personalised moments tailored to that couple and it takes us all over the world.”

She founded her business after helping her brother, Danny, plan his own proposal 12 years ago.

(Nudge Photography / SWNS)

“He didn’t know what to do. I planned this huge treasure hunt around London and he proposed at sunset – she said yes,” Amodio said. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t this be a fun job?’”

She revealed that the cat-themed proposal took place in a cat café in Shoreditch because the man’s partner loved the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats.

The porn-star proposal involved displaying “naked photos of [the couple] all over the room in a very pretty way”, while one man wanted to scare his fiancée-to-be before popping the question by making her believe she was being arrested for carrying marijuana.

However, one particularly memorable proposal had Amodio abseiling down a cliff in the Lake District with a backpack and a table, chairs, candles and champagne attached to her.

(The Proposals / SWNS)

“The man said how much she loved going caving and I was terrified,” she explained. “So, I abseiled down with a huge rucksack, a table, chairs and champagne.

“I had to army crawl through mud and water. It looked beautiful in the end.”

According to Amodio, the most popular locations for proposals are Dubai, London, Paris and Iceland. She said February is a busy time of the year, and she currently has 11 proposals planned for Valentine’s Day.

(@theysaidyes / SWNS)

“Most men get the ring and just have no idea how to do it and need our help and they put in so much effort,” she said.

“I’ve only seen one proposal where the man hasn’t got down on one knee – 95 per cent of proposals are male [to] female, five per cent are same sex and I’ve helped three women propose to men.”

Reporting by SWNS

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in