So you have an artsy fartsy kind of gal and want to surprise her with a creative proposal? You should be able to give her a day she won’t forget. Whether she paints, sculpts, or makes stop motion Lego movies; she will most certainly appreciate a trip to an art museum.
This creative marriage proposal idea can be pretty easily to set up in a few weeks to a month depending on the particular museum in your area. I called the art museum closest to me to ask some general questions on how to set up a marriage proposal in their facility. The lady I spoke with told me that normally they could accommodate a room reservation quickly and easily. Of course at this time they are under renovations until 2016 and can’t do any, but she was still very helpful.
None of the figures in the following should be used to plan your marriage proposal. You should certainly call your local museum to find out their particular pricing and availability. She told me there were several options to choose from. You can rent a small gallery room that is open to the public for a couple of hundred bucks all the way up to renting out the whole museum for a super private event that could cost several thousand dollars.
For the purposes of this post we will talk about the more inexpensive route of only getting one gallery. This proposal scenario is easier to pull off and you can have a great deal of fun with it. The first thing you should do is call your local art museum and find out what options you have. Here is how I approached it and some of the questions I asked.
Hello, my name is Jerry Dempsey and I am planning a romantic proposal for my girlfriend. I would like to know if it is possible to rent one of your gallery rooms for a few hours on that day. Is this possible?
If the answer is no, call another museum. If the answer is yes…
Great! I would like to be able to put up several pictures of us in the gallery and also have one of those pedestal displays in the center of the room to put the ring in. I’ll probably also need a person to stay in the room with it until I am able to propose. Do you know how much doing something like that would cost?
You will get some sort of an answer. The lady I spoke with said it depended on if it was a private room or if I wanted to do it while the museum was open. I told her it would not be private because I just wanted to “wander” into the room and have her be confused, surprised, then shocked. She said that would most likely not cost more than a couple hundred dollars since the museum was open and we would not need to hire anyone to come in and open it or have an extra guard to watch the ring while we were “wandering”. There was also minimal set up involved.
At some point you will also want to ask when it is possible to do this. I was not able to do this since my local museum is closed for renovation right now, but they should be able to tell you pretty easily what their availability is. From there, you need to pick a date and start planning.
Some of the major items you will want to plan for are below:
Picking out the photos you want to use. This may sound easy, but you want to make sure you choose images that mean something to her. Images like this are generally easy to find. She may have already printed them and had them framed. Another good place to look is in her social media profile pictures. Chances are she has some of you two together. Worst case scenario, you can try to get one of her or your friends to take pictures of you together sometime when you are out. Go on a double date to the zoo or something similar. Just make sure the pictures mean something to her. You can also throw one or two in there of just her. Tell her they are your favorite pictures of her. If there is a picture of just you that is her favorite, make sure to use it as well.
Then you will want to get them blown up. This can also be tricky because you will need to get the best version of the image she has. you don’t want to use the one that she has posted on the web because the quality won’t be good enough.
You will need to possibly have a couple of weeks allocated to the printing and delivery of the portraits. In that time, you can be doing other things. First of all, call the museum back and ensure they have enough easels that are the right size reserved, or if you are able to use the walls, ask them if what you have done will be enough to make it look nice.
It should go without saying, but make sure to have the finished pictures delivered somewhere she won’t see them. Maybe your work or a friend’s house. You don’t want to give it away on accident. You will also need to make arrangements for the day before to have the pictures and ring delivered to the museum to be set up for you the following day.
Something else you may want to coordinate is having a photographer on site the day of to capture the moment. It should be fairly easy for a photographer to hide with all the people in the museum. They should be able to capture her initial reaction to the room as well as you doing the deed and hopefully her saying yes.
What do you think about this creative proposal idea? Have an idea how to make it even better? Email me.
Before you go and while you are feeling romantic, take a moment and send her a bouquet of flowers “just because”. You will be her hero.
