Jordan and Nikki: New Orleans Surprise Proposal Photography
New Orleans Surprise Proposal Photography
Jordan proposes to Nikki in New Orleans City Park
For most Surprise Proposals, folks like to keep things simple. Sometimes all you need is a pretty backdrop and the person you love. But every now and then, I get to work with someone who wants to take things up a notch. Jordan was one of those people.
There was just one catch though- I was supposed to be out of town on his date! I had already booked a flight to meet my brand new nephew in North Carolina. But when he told me about his idea, I really wanted to be a part of it. So I changed my flight to a few days later and got on planning his surprise!
Jordan knew he wanted to propose somewhere in City Park and he wanted to add some personalized elements to it. He wanted music to play during the proposal and I suggested we hire a musician to play his and Nikki’s song, Feel Good by Illenium. I work with some truly incredible musicians who can learn songs of any genre. There’s one guy in particular who knocks it out of the park each and every time. Just like I had been, he wasn’t available but I knew he was the man for the job. So with some gentle pleading, he subbed out his gig and hopped on board Jordan’s proposal!
He also wanted to add flowers and a chalkboard sign like he had seen in another proposal I had done in a different part of City Park. Nikki’s favorite flower was sunflowers and I envisioned this ring of bright yellow surrounding Jordan and Nikki while he pops the question against a deep green City Park background. Sunflower season and just ended and they aren’t the easiest stem to find! But the wonderful Ashley at Nola Flora called around and found us 50 sunflowers for the surprise proposal. (while they ended up looking marvelous, I will say take however many flowers you think you are going to need and double it. I would have loved for there to be even more sunflowers!). I drew out a map of where he should have his driver drop them off and which direction to walk in the park so that he encountered the musician without spoiling the sunflower surprise.
I arrived early with my assistant, Chandra, and was met with two lovely folks from Nola Flora. It was raining and had been all day. I was waiting until the very last second to switch to the rain plan. While it would have also been lovely, it wasn’t what Jordan really wanted and I didn’t want to make that call too early and it end up not being rainy at all. Just as I expected, it stopped raining a few minutes after we arrived! We hauled the buckets of sunflowers and the sign over to the fountain and got to work!
While my assistant, Chandra, wrote “Nikki, will you marry me?” on the chalkboard sign, the team from Nola Flora cut the stems off of all of the sunflowers so I could arrange them around the fountain. I had them leave a tiny bit of stem on each so I’d be able to prop them up. With the extra helping hands, setup went way faster than I had planned! We were ready to go with plenty of time before Jordan and Nikki’s scheduled arrival.
But their driver had other ideas. Jordan couldn’t tell the driver to not take the scenic route since Nikki didn’t know there was any reason to need to be at the park by a certain time. I was receiving frantic texts from Jordan as their driver took them on a crazy route around the city like they were on a sightseeing tour. But I told him not to panic- we may have missed the golden hour light but a twilight proposal is just as romantic.
And it absolutely was! I hid behind a tree to catch a few photos of them enjoying their song before walking over to a bench near the fountain and pretending the be tooling around with my camera. As soon as Jordan lead Nikki to her surprise, I was ready to jump into action. It ended up being absolutely gorgeous- there wasn’t a dry eye between the lot of us.
Want to plan your own New Orleans Surprise Proposal? From simple to simply breathtaking, I’ve got you covered.
Here’s a selecton of images from Jordan and Nikki’s New Orleans City Park Surprise Proposal Photography.
