Trey and Taylor: Surprise Proposal with Style
Livaudais Hall Hosts a Stylish Couple’s Surprise Proposal
Trey stages a surprise marriage proposal in an old, romantic church with giant marquee letters.
Trey’s proposal to Taylor really raised the bar for proposing in New Orleans. He decided to dial the romance all the way up to eleven and I was thrilled to make this happen for him!
Trey had a few priorities for his proposal to Taylor: he wanted beautiful decor and intimacy. He told me he wasn’t really the creative type so he needed some help in that arena and he knew for certain Taylor would prefer a proposal without a lot of people around. This can be a hard task to pull off at many popular locations in a tourist city like New Orleans. He had originally wanted to propose in City Park for the privacy factor. But he also wanted marquee letters. And after calling around to various rental houses in town, I found one who was available AND had a really decent rental rate, AlphaLit Nola.
I discovered we wouldn’t be able to set up marquee letters inside of city park unless we had a location like the peristyle rented. Marquee Letters require power and also shelter from any potential weather events. They can run them off a generator but generators are not allowed in City Park.
So we needed a venue that had power, was safe from the weather, and was mostly if not entirely private.
I knew just the place.
A few months ago, I met a kickass wedding planner named Samantha with Three Little Words Weddings. We met during a rather chaotic wedding gig (that she was a frickin’ superhero during!) and I asked her to grab a coffee with me later that week. I keep a list of wedding pros to recommend to clients and when I find one who is clearly a badass I make sure to forge a connection.
Our coffee meeting was one part bonkers wedding decompression, one part getting to know each other and each others businesses, and one part figuring out how we can work together moving forward. Samantha is not only an accomplished wedding planner who stays booked out well in advance but she’s also a wife, a mother to a toddler, and the events coordinator of a venue I had never heard of before- Livaudais Hall.
Fortunately, the Hall’s website has a great recap of the building’s history:
“Located at 2205 Second street in Faubourg Livaudais(liv-a-day), a neighborhood within Uptown New Orleans, Livaudais Hall, was once the home of St Francis De Sales Catholic Church. The church was founded in New Orleans in 1867, only 2 years after the end of the civil war.
The building was originally constructed in 1875, with the bell tower added in 1888. The bell tower used to contain another story higher, but was severely damaged in a hurricane in the early 20th century. The other buildings on the grounds were built in the late 1890’s
St Francis De Sales operated at Livaudais Hall from 1875 until 2008, when it was de-consecrated by the Church and sold to a non-profit for redevelopment into a cultural center. Unfortunately, the new owner did not have the funds to restore the property and it was left to decay and become blighted.
In 2017 the property was sold to a local developer, Peter Gardner, and the entire property restored. The historic convent and rectory were converted to housing while the main sanctuary was modernized and restored, and ready to serve the community for the next 100 years.”
I scrolled through the hall’s website and checked out the photos- all I could say was “Wow. Just Wow!”. It had a huge open sanctuary space that got gorgeous natural light. There was also a choir loft that would be perfect for overview shots of proposals. And the coolest part? There had never been a surprise proposal there before!
And y’all know how I like firsts.
Samantha said her schedule was too busy to take on proposal planning as well so she’d be happy to send referrals my way. I was happy to start recommending her venue as a proposal location. I knew as soon as the photos made their way online, requests would start coming in (it’s true, it’s happened before I even got this post up. Thanks, Instagram!). I used to recommend another church-turned-wedding-venue uptown but it cost more than twice what Livaudais Hall costs to rent and the coordinator there didn’t really want to work with proposals in addition to all the events that happen there. I was stoked to find a new spot that was even more beautiful and at a rate that truly can’t be beat. Proposals can add up quickly so I love to save my clients money wherever I can without sacrificing quality. And Livaudais Hall definitely brings the WOW factor!
I actually already had another proposal planned for Livaudais Hall on December 18th (it was last night and it was AHMAYZING!!!). Theirs was supposed to be the first ever at the hall but Trey wanted his proposal on December 3rd. So it looked like his was actually going to be the first (and the second would be the first Lesbian proposal at Livaudais Hall. Still a first!). And we were going to kick off proposals at this location in a HUGE way.
We planned to setup an arch that I’d decorate in fresh garland, AlphaLit would bring marquee letters that spelled out “marry me” and we’d have 15,000 red, white, and pink rose petals. You read that right. Fifteen THOUSAND rose petals (which works out to something like 200 roses)!
With a space as large as Livaudais Hall, you really have to go big with the decor for it to have the desired impact. The stage is against a massive back wall with huge windows starting 15 or so feet up. Any display on that stage needs height and the arch was a great way to give it that. We were also going to need a LOT of rose petals. About 200 roses worth to be precise. I had originally wanted to make a solid bed of petals in front of the marquee letters but then I realized that they might be slick to walk on when scattered on a hardwood floor (I’m used to putting petals on brick, concrete, and grass!). Especially if Taylor was in heels (and from what I’d learned about her from Trey, she was going to be dressed to the nines!). I didn’t overthink it (yet, lol). I just ordered enough petals and decided to figure it out on the day of.
The last element this proposal definitely needed was music. I didn’t even have to step foot in the space to know the acoustics were going to be incredible. Which would be great for music but bad for every single other sound in there. We definitely needed something to fill the space with romantic ambient sounds rather than footsteps and shutter clicks. We ran down all of the musician options I have in my deck and he decided violin was the way to go.
With all of the elements in place we just needed a solid ruse to get Taylor to the hall! They live in Baton Rouge and come to New Orleans frequently. It turned out that it was Trey’s brother’s birthday that weekend and he lives in New Orleans. So the ruse was they were attending his fancy birthday party. One of the easiest ruses I’ve had in a while.
I put a team together to help me set this one up. This was going to need more than the usual 1-2 assistant crew. In fact, this was one of the most elaborate proposals I had planned to date! I was stoked when Victoria was available. She’s a great assistant (I call her mighty mouse. She’s tiny like me but strong as hell!) and always has cool ideas for the decor if ever I’m feeling stuck in the moment. She’s also one of the flower chuckers in that one proposal video of mine that went viral. I also had the person who got proposed to in my last proposal, DaiJuan, coming to help! She’s a fledgling photographer herself and wanted to learn by watching me in action. I also planned to station her up in the choir loft to hit the button on a third camera I’d have up there on a tripod for a nice wide shot of the proposal.
Working with AlphaLit was so easy. They even beat me there and I arrived super early! I was a little annoyed when I pulled up to the venue and there was a cargo van parked right in front. I had so much to unload! But that annoyance quickly ended when I realized it was AlphaLit’s van. This is not a town that runs on time and I was pretty impressed he’d gotten there early.
It’s a good thing, too, because I made that poor guy move the letters like 4 times. 😂 Trey said that he wanted the letter visible through the arch and we had to try a number of different positions on both the letters and the arch to make that possible. It was impossible to get them visible from the door but they would be once they got closer to the stage. I was being SO meticulous about the setup. My perfectionism was off the charts with it being the first time at this venue. Perfectionism isn’t the best trait a lot of the times but in proposal set it can come in pretty handy!
I made sure the aisle we created with the petals was straight and everything was centered. It would have driven me bananas had it not been! Once the door opens, the jig is up. You can see the stage immediately even though it’s still a good 150 feet or so away. So I wanted it to look stellar at their very first sight of it.
Speaking of, I settled on a heart shape of red rose petals for Trey to lead Taylor into instead of the bed of petals. It was a much safer option!
The violinist, Daron, arrived 15 minutes before our scheduled go-time. She played a bit at the front of the room by the stage and wow did the sound ever carry! Even playing quietly I thought it might be too loud if she stood that close. So I stationed her at the back of the room. Victoria went outside to act as the doorwoman for the event. She said that the sound carried so well she could even hear it out front! SO I asked Daron to only start playing when I cued her. It was supposed to be a party and while the violin is lovely it’s not exactly party vibes! It is, however, very much proposal vibes. I didn’t want to give the secret away a moment too soon.
Just before he arrived, Trey let me know when he was getting close. He asked if I could be sure to get a photo of her face when they walk in. He wanted to have her reaction captured. I was like “oh, for sure”. I was already hiding behind one of the large support pillars near the door. Ryan was behind me hiding as well, ready to get some BTS video.
I had everyone stay client so I could listen for their arrival. I waited for what felt like an eternity and I still didn’t hear them. My heart started pounding and I bounced from foot to foot with the excitement building. Daron was across the room with a big smile on her face. It was her first proposal and she was also very excited.
When I looked at the behind the scenes footage later, both Ryan’s hands and mine were shaking! Fortunately, the photos came out perfectly.
The doors finally opened and I cued Daron. I couldn’t see the couple yet but I sure could hear them. Taylor said “what the F@$!” 😂
I took some sneaky shots as they came into view but she spotted me. The look on her face was pure shock. She kept asking Trey “What is this???”
I expected she would be dressed to the nines and damn, did she ever deliver! They both looked absolutely gorgeous and I was doing my damndest to keep the giggling in. (I used to cry at every proposal. But now I’m more inclined to giggle. There’s so much that goes into planning these and I just get overwhelmed with joy when the person says yes!). He didn’t end up leading her to the petal heart and I soon learned why. Her dress was definitely not well suited for climbing stairs! Ahh well, it still looked great in the photos after!
Trey popped the question and a very stunned Taylor said “yes!” Both of them were very clearly trying not to cry. He put the ENORMOUS ring on her finger and she flung her arms around her fiancé.
Sidebar: As you can imagine, I’ve seen many rings (at the writing of this, 127 engagement rings and many, many more wedding rings!). I am just as impressed by the simple, stylish ones as I am by the slammin’, statement ones. I’m personally not a diamonds kind of Lady but I appreciate that particular sparkle only a diamond has when the light hits it just right. And when I see the look on a person’s face when they really take in the ring on their finger? Yeah, I appreciate that too. 😂
They walked over to the pews to collect themselves and call family while I set up for their engagement session. Trey helped Taylor re-buckle her shoes since reaching them in a dress with a mermaid silhouette is pretty much impossible (for real, y’all. You either gotta put them on first or get someone to help you! Same story for corsets). I caught a couple of sweet candids of them sitting together. It was an overcast day so the light in the room was even. There was really no bad place for a photo.
I got to give DaiJuan a crash course in using off-camera flash as well as balancing flash and ambient light. We had 3 light sources to contend with: the marquee letters, the ambient light in the room, and my flash. It didn’t take me long to get it dialed in and BAM! The results were dazzling. It didn’t hurt the couple was an unfair level of beautiful. They both had million dollar smiles and stayed laughing the whole time. They were not the couple to try to get serious, fashion-magazine-cover shots out of. These two couldn’t help but smile when they looked at each other.
It was rather warm for early December and the sun had come out to start baking the front of the building. So we had to do a bit of holding for clouds and when that failed, I had DaiJuan hold up a diffuser to block as much of the direct sun as we could. I really wanted a solid backlit silhouette shot in the door of the grotto outside. In the end, it was pretty much impossible without doing some serious lighting gymnastics and we were already out of time. It became a rare “fix it in post” moment and I think it turned out pretty great!
Sidebar number 2: when I was just starting out and I saw something in a scene I didn’t like I’d like “ahh I’ll fix it in post”. But now? Oh hell naw. If I can get it right in camera I do it. I move bits of trash or distracting objects if I can. I smooth flyaways and straighten ties. When I was still learning, removing unwanted objects in photoshop was fun. But now that this is my full-time job spending extra hours in post is the last thing I want to do. Not that I don’t enjoy the editing process. I do! It’s why I haven’t farmed it out to an editing service (that and the aforementioned perfectionism! I don’t trust anyone else with my work). But if I can spend 4 hours editing a proposal instead of 8 I’m pretty happy about it!
Anywho, I’m still like 500 words short of what google wants to see but there really isn’t much left to this story! We knocked it out of the park and everyone was really happy. Especially Trey who knew that saving up to make his proposal extra special was absolutely the right move.
You only get to propose once. You might as well do it as big as you can!
Photos and video of Trey and Taylor’s epic New Orleans surprise proposal after the jump!
Ready to plan your epic surprise?
