20/02/2026

LYFE FRIDAY | FEB 20, 2026

22

Love on Seine T HE luxury marriage proposal business is booming in Paris with international clients happy to pay thousands to pop the question in the most romantic way possible in the City of Love. o Customise your own Paris wedding proposal

years ago – there are 25 today, with options for every budget,” said Florian Perrault, the founder of Paris Proposal Agency. Perrault’s specialties are rooftops and private boats, which cost around €1,800. Luxury hotels such as the Shangri La also reserve terraces with views of the Eiffel Tower for their clients. “We arrange everything for them: Flowers, candles, photographer, dinner with a private butler,” said Melanie Tessier, its guest relations manager. The spectacular staging builds loyalty, with clients returning later for anniversaries or family stays, she said. For particularly affluent clients, high-end agencies create fully tailor made productions. “Our clients, they don’t want it necessarily for Instagram, but they want it as a bragging moment for their friends, their circle, (to) say, ‘Oh, guess what I did for my proposal,’” said Chantelle Marie Streete, co-founder of Kiss Me in Paris. At one man’s request, the agency devised a Mission Impossible production for an adventurous young woman: an iPad delivered in the morning launched a scavenger hunt across Paris by sidecar and by boat. A helicopter then carried the couple to a rented chateau. The cost? Several tens of thousands of euros. Unforgettable These luxury clients are typically business executives and entrepreneurs aged 35 to 55 from the US, Australia, the UK, Nordic countries, Singapore and the Middle East. In addition to the City of Light and New York City, other picturesque

Fuelled by social media, some of the city’s most famous landmarks are being used as backdrops for the lavish “American-style” proposals. “We’ve always dreamed of a fairytale wedding,” 44-year-old Dutch businessman Sander Castel told AFP after contacting ApoteoSurprise, an agency that organises picturesque engagements. A sparkling Cinderella-style horse drawn carriage drew up before Castel and his partner Shirley Wijgaarts, who was wearing a ballgown, in glitzy Place Vendome. The coachman produced a pink box with a glass slipper inside, telling them: “I’ve come to find a princess.” After a romantic ride through chic neighbourhoods, Castel got down on one knee as a violinist played with the twinkling Eiffel Tower in the background. Wijgaarts, 40, was taken aback, thinking they were just in Paris for a weekend getaway. “I wasn’t expecting it! And of course I said yes. He’s my prince,” she said. Spectacular productions On the banks of the river Seine, proposal agencies arrange scenes calibrated for the internet: Giant letters spelling out “Marry Me”, massive flower arrangements and heart-shaped balloons. A photo session with the set-up can set clients back anywhere from €300 to €700 (RM1,385 to RM3,232). “There were three agencies five

A Dutch couple poses in front of the Eiffel Tower as they take part in a Cinderella-themed marriage proposal in Paris. proposal hotspots include Venice, the Amalfi Coast, Cappadocia in Turkey, Greece’s Santorini and Australia. “You don’t need to have a contract to be together, but if you do get married, the engagement is one of the most romantic elements leading up to that thing called marriage,” said Cengiz Ozelsel, who, like his wife Chantelle, was formerly a Wall Street banker before founding Kiss Me in Paris. There are also other influences at play. “There is peer pressure, because they’ve seen what their friends did. There is the expectation that has been planted with an affluent lifestyle. And there is the idea of showing effort,” he said. “Like Valentine’s Day, the proposal has become a ritual shaped by an industry. Despite the reluctance of her father, the underwater wizard Fujimoto, little Ponyo falls in love with her new friend and gives up her magical powers to become human. Entirely hand drawn, the film was hailed as a visual masterpiece marking Miyazaki’s return to the traditional animation of his early career, after incorporating computer generated images in Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle . “What’s really special about Ponyo is he instructed his team right from the beginning that everything in this movie needs to move,” said Niebel, recalling how the artists created a lush aquatic world, with swirling colours underwater and waves that shifted with the weather. Animation enthusiasts will find sketches of some of the film’s key sequences, drawn in pencil, and projections of its most majestic moments. But the immersive exhibition is above all “geared towards children”, the film’s primary audience, Niebel said.

In Paris, marriage proposals take on a cinematic flair, complete with Cinderella’s carriage, private terraces and bespoke scenarios.

artwork, revealing to the bride-to-be a painting that depicted them in that very moment. Weeks earlier, the hopeful groom had planned the clothes they would wear, imagined the scene and commissioned the painting. “She turns around, he’s down on one knee and she’s very emotional,” Streete said.

“Not conforming to these stagings can be perceived as a lack of love or romance,” said Florence Maillochon, a sociologist specialising in intimate relationships. In another high-spec proposal production, a couple visited an art gallery featuring a painting hidden under a veil. The gallerist agreed to uncover the

Oscars museum dives into world of Miyazaki’s cinematic classic Ponyo WITH simulated waves, animation tables and dozens of original sketches on display, a new exhibition in the Oscars museum offers immersion into the aquatic world of Ponyo , Hayao Miyazaki’s cinematic classic. drawings, storyboards and other elements created for the film and gifted to the Los Angeles institution by Miyazaki’s world-famous Studio Ghibli are going on display. Andersen fairy tale The Little Mermaid , Miyazaki’s story centers around a goldfish with a girl’s face who is rescued by five-year-old boy Sosuke.

“It’s such a treasure to have, we should share it with our visitors,” the exhibit’s curator Jessica Niebel told AFP. The museum has dedicated over 350 sq m to the magical 2008 movie. Inspired by the Hans Christian

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened in 2021 with a retrospective dedicated to the grand master of Japanese animation. Nearly five years later, dozens of

A visitor watches a video shown at the media preview of the Academy Museum’s Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo exhibition in Los Angeles.

– all under the benevolent eyes of the film’s elders at a retirement home threatened by rising waters. Niebel said she hopes the exhibit might “invite the younger generation to maybe think about becoming a filmmaker” or a creative artist. The exhibit runs until January 2027. Admission is free for children under 17.

Younger kids can romp around on rolling blue installations that mimic waves, slide a Ponyo figure across an ocean wall, or hide in a replica of Sosuke’s green bucket which he used to collect goldfish. Children and their parents are urged to sit at animation tables to position sharks, jellyfish and crabs, taking photos frame by frame to create their own animated sequence

A father and his child play with an animated character at the media preview of the Academy Museum’s Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo exhibition. – ALL PICS FROM AFP