Surprise Proposal: Finding Love at Beavertail State Park

Unlike most of my proposal clients who are from out of state, Peter knew exactly where he was going to propose; Beavertail State Park, the location of his very first date with Brittany three years earlier.

Beavertail is my favorite place for a proposal; it is easy to park, has stunning rugged ocean scenery, has a lighthouse, and is never crowded.

We planned to talk in the week leading up to the proposal, and early in the week prior, the weather needed to be better; rain was forecast for all day on Saturday. We opted to meet late in the week when we would be in the weather window. We left it very late – 24 hours before – but it made sense because the weather forecast had changed radically by the time we met via ZOOM, and there was now no rain in tomorrow’s forecast.

During our ZOOM meeting, we review this blog article – Locations for Proposals of Marriage in Beavertail State Park – which details all the proposal photography spots.

Plan ‘A’ was position ‘F,’ and Plan ‘B’ was position ‘D’ if the weather was against us. I expressed concern about the wind forecast; 20mph would be very uncomfortable on the island! I was concerned because there are few locations to hide from the wind. I informed Peter that I would arrive 30 minutes before him and may have to make an audible on the proposal spot if the wind was unfavorable.

The time of the proposal was 7:15 pm; I arrived at 6:45 pm, and the wind was howling. I reviewed both proposal spots and ruled them out; the wind was coming from the North, North-East and the only shelter from the wind was on the south side of the lighthouse. I notified Peter via text of my concern and suggestion; he agreed.

Then I took a photo with my phone and annotated it with an arrow to get Peter to the right spot. With nowhere to hide, I decided to have Peter walk past me to the proposal location and positioned my yellow Helly Hansen bag as a marker of my position. I was tracking Peter’s location by GPS and saw his blue VW pull into the parking lot; game on!

As they approached the lighthouse, I used my iPhone to take photos of the fisherman on the rocks; they walked right past me.

When they arrived at the spot, I moved back to my yellow bag and waited for the knee to drop; at that point, I pulled out my camera and captured the wonderful moment; Brittany was overjoyed with emotion.