Women-Owned Business Series: Ash from Ash Fox Proposals

Welcome back to our Women-Owned Business Series! We are so happy to feature Ash Fox from Ash Fox Proposals! Ash works to help deliver a pristine, heartwarming, and beautiful engagement for people in love in NYC. With that extra touch of romance, she ends up a crucial part of couples’ lives. Read about her story below!

First, tell us about your business and anything special we should know about it or you.

I am Ash Fox, a Marriage Proposal planner, advisor and podcast host. I help coach, conceptualize, and bring my client’s dream proposals to life! I began my business in 2012 and since then I have worked on over 2000 + marriage proposals for couple’s from all over the world who desire to get engaged in New York City! I love my job and feel so blessed to work in the world of love and romance.

Why do you feel a connection to your work?

I have always been a lover of fairytales and firmly feel that we must romanticize our own lives. Today most couple’s discuss marriage long before a proposal takes place and so they already are planning on creating a life together. The proposals I do are a chance to create an elevated milestone memory in the couple’s history. It becomes a story they will tell for years down the line and a memory that acts as an anchor to bring them closer together and remember where they started.
I work with all kinds of couple’s with different taste and styles and it’s important to meet their needs. Some of my clients have very personalized or sentimental concepts for their proposals and need help refining and nailing down the game plan. Other’s are going for more over the top, grandiose proposals which require a lot of moving parts, decor music and my full team on boars! I also have many client’s who have no idea where to start and come to me for help with everything from the concept to the full execution of the idea!
The wedding journey is a long one and can be stressful for couples but I feel the proposal is a very special intimate piece of the story and an opportunity to have a truly romantic experience with your partner that’s just about the two of you and no one else, whereas the wedding and engagement and bachelor/ bachelorette parties are largely centered around friends and family.

As a business owner, community is everything. In what ways do you serve your community and how has your community served you?

My business celebrates love and romance. Romance is a dying art I feel and I feel very strongly it’s my personal duty to inspire people to step it up a notch and imbue their lives with more of it!

What advice would you give to young women who want to start a small business?

Go out, live and explore and try a lot of different things. I didn’t consciously set out to create this business at the beginning, it was something that I fell into over time through exploring and trying a lot of creative pursuits.

What women inspire you and why?

My biggest inspirations are badass women who are free thinkers, express themselves with abandon, are full of vitality and vivaciousness and live life by their own design. Some of these women are Chrissie Hynde, Dara Dubinet, Juliette Lewis, Regena Thomashauer, Gina Devee, Betty Dodson, Georgia O’ Keefe, and many more.

What do you think are the most significant challenges for women business owners or women in leadership positions?

I think a struggle a lot of female business owner’s deal with is in balancing their yin and yang energies. As leaders and action oriented people we often have to live in our “yang” for most of the day. However it’s vital that we take pauses, have adequate rest to recenter ourselves, tune into our bodies and come back into our yin energy as that is where we can source our creativity and nourish ourselves so that we can go back into the world to lead.

Ash’s work has been featured all over the world on German, France, and Japanese Television, including two videos going viral with over 15 million views – you can see those here and here. She also is host of The Proposal Podcast, centered around getting engaged. It is where she offers free advice on all the things you might be worried or stressed about in the proposal process like how to actually keep things a surprise, how to come top with the right idea, where to hide the ring, how to buy a ring, proposing for the 2nd or 3rd time, proposing to a man etc! On the podcast she also interviews experts in the relationship and wedding space. The Proposal Podcast is on all major podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and more.

And/ or if you or a friend or family member needs help with full service or partial Proposal Planning, Surprise Proposal Photography, Engagement Portraits, Elaborate proposal decor, Marry Me signs, live music and videography she offers all of it within in the NYC region, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens and beyond! You can get in touch with Ash and the AFP team on Instagram or the website!