The incredible efforts Aussies are making to propose

SOME Australians are going to extraordinary lengths to pop the question to their partners. And these are the women who make it happen.

PROPOSALS of marriage come in all shapes and sizes.

Some are traditional, like over dessert at a fancy restaurant. Others are simple, like a sudden question blurted out during a TV ad break.

And some are major, elaborate, logistically complicated operations, requiring extra personnel working hard to pull it off — and that’s where these two women come in.

Tania Alaee and Gloria Gammo are the founders of My Proposal Co, and they’ve orchestrated more than 100 lavish, luxury proposals for Australian men and women all over the world. (Thankfully, all resulted in a happy “Yes”.)

Tania and Gloria have pulled off elaborate proposals for couples in Italy, Hawaii, Japan, New Zealand — even one along the Great Wall of China — as well as here in Australia.

They’re the people you go to if you have a big question to ask and a big idea for how to do it — and sometimes no idea at all.

My Proposal Co helped organise the beautiful moment Aussie man Ben proposed to his partner Kelly in Lake Como, Italy.

“People will either come to us with their grand ideas and they need our help with the logistics and planning, or they’ll come to us with a rough idea and we can get creative with adding things and making it perfect,” Gloria told news.com.au.

Tanya added: “And sometimes they have no idea and we have to create a whole concept for them. We have to ask a lot of questions about the guy or girl they’re proposing to, the kinds of things they like, sometimes we have to do some light Facebook stalking … there’s a lot that goes into it when they don’t really have an idea, but we try to make it personal.”

Most of my.proposal.co’s clients are men proposing to their girlfriends, although they have arranged proposals for same-sex couples and women proposing to their blokes.

Some clients are willing to spend into the tens of thousands of dollars on the proposal, usually for those held overseas. The average spent is around $4000, and the minimum is $1000.

“The average cost of an Australian wedding right now is $80,000 to $100,000,” Gloria said. “So $4000 is not much compared to that, especially when it’s something amazing and memorable.”

A big challenge for Gloria and Tanya is the covert nature of the whole operation — they need to find ways to fool the person being proposed to, so they don’t cotton on to what’s happening.

Kelly had no idea what Ben had in store when he popped the question in Italy. Meanwhile, Gloria and Tanya were back in Australia, making sure it all went off without a hitch.

That’s especially needed for fellas who aren’t exactly known for taking their girl out somewhere fancy for no good reason.

“We’ve created fake wedding invitations, fake birthday groups on Facebook, fake websites, to give that reason [why] the couple is going somewhere,” Gloria said.

“We once had to create a website for one client to pretend he was taking his girlfriend to a Vivid Festival installation that didn’t exist on Observatory Hill [in Sydney], where he wanted to propose.”

In another memorable job, Gloria and Tanya staged a fake art gallery exhibition in Adelaide for a man’s art-loving girlfriend, which featured photos of the couple’s time together.

They hired fake guests, a fake gallery manager and fake interviews of guests, including the couple, which was all a ruse to hook them up with microphones so the big moment could be filmed. (It was another enthusiastic “Yes”.)

International proposals are even trickier. A client, Ben, wanted to propose to his girlfriend Kelly in Lake Como, Italy. It needed to happen between the time the couple checked out of their hotel in Milan and the time they arrived at their next hotel in Lake Como.

The happy couple will marry in Lake Como, which the bride said held a special significance for her groom.

They literally had to use Google Maps to scout locations and find local contacts to pull off a lavish proposal on the grounds of a private villa on the lake, complete with flowers, Champagne and a boat ride.

But for all their planning, there are a few times when the plans almost come unstuck. And that’s often because of tourists.

“When we’re at a public location we have a lot of tourists who can be a challenge for us because they’ll see an elaborate display and they’ll be quite intrusive and start taking photos,” Gloria said.

“Sometimes it’s 30 seconds before the girlfriend or boyfriend arrives and we have to shoo them away. We’ve had people go up to the couple, mid-proposal, to get photos.”

In another proposal almost went awry — this one, a proposal in the form of a flash mob — Gloria had to stop a mob of drunken teenagers from stumbling right into the action.

“She couldn’t say it was a proposal, because they’d give the game away, so they had to ask them to leave,” Tanya said.

“When the man proposed, they all cheered for the couple, which was cute, and then helped Gloria pick up all the rose petals off the ground.”