Lady.

Lady Walker was born and raised in New Orleans and spent years as a wedding photographer without ever feeling she fit that world. Her first proposal job came in 2013. She hid in the bushes in City Park, across a bayou, while a client showed his girlfriend a photo album from a secret trip to Spain, where he had asked her father for her hand. Proposal work kept coming after that, and the people booking her kept asking for help with the plan, so by 2020 she was planning the whole thing.

By her own count the photography is about a fifth of the job. The rest is logistics, timing and getting someone to the right spot without them guessing why. She asks a lot of questions about the two of you and builds the cover story out of the answers. For one client whose girlfriend loved antiquing, she put a sign out advertising an estate sale and had a salesperson inside ready to demonstrate an old gramophone. For a cemetery proposal she staged an entire fake tour, with a hired guide and pretend tour guests, herself among them, and a string duo who happened to be practicing a few blocks in. The décor comes out of an outbuilding she keeps for it, and some plans include a keepsake she has made by hand.

If you're flying in, book her for the cover story and not only the photos, because most people who ask her for a couple of pictures haven't worked out how to get their partner to the spot. She likes the oak grove in City Park, where the trees are hundreds of years old, and she'll tell you which low spots in the park flood when it rains.