Couple quits their jobs and starts a proposal planning business

Michele and Marvin Velazquez had an unusual source of inspiration to start their business. It’s a less-than-perfect engagement story.

The Orange County, Calif.-based couple, both 46 years old, are the founders of custom proposal planning company The Heart Bandits. Their love story is the basis of their business, with annual gross income reaching seven figures.

Michele, a military veteran who worked in event planning, first met Marvin, an MIT-educated engineer, through work. After two years of dating, Marvin proposed to Michele in April 2010 after a sunset cruise in Marina del Rey.

“He got down on one knee and proposed, and it was over very quickly,” Michelle told CNBC Make It. “Of course I was happy,” she says, but she later told her now-husband that it wasn’t the proposal of her dreams, and that she would have preferred something a little more daring, like a flash mob.

Marvin admitted that he had a hard time coming up with a good proposal plan. “He said, ‘Well, there aren’t really any resources for men,'” Michelle recalls. That sparked an idea in her. What if you started a service to help other couples achieve the proposal of their dreams?

Michelle and Marvin officially launched The Heart Bandits a few months after getting engaged. They currently plan around 500 marriage proposals each year and estimate they have worked with 9,000 couples to date.

Michelle dreamed of being an entrepreneur since she was a child, so she was “always looking for gaps in the market and different ways to start a business,” she says.

For the first few years, the couple founded The Heart Bandits on the side while working full-time jobs, Michelle said.

To attract customers, they posted flyers in local parking lots and even applied custom decals to their cars, turning them into advertisements. Michelle also promoted The Heart Bandits on online message boards such as Yahoo Answers.

“Every time a guy posts, ‘How should I propose?’ I’d say, ‘Oh, we’re in the proposal planning business.’ You should definitely check it out,” she says.

That’s how she got The Heart Bandits’ first customer. The soldier was a soldier who wanted to plan a virtual proposal in Houston while he was deployed overseas in Afghanistan. Michelle and Marvin set up a video projector in their flower-filled hotel room so he could propose to his then-girlfriend.

Michelle said it was a “heartwarming” story, so she pitched it to the Houston Chronicle, which featured it in an article. Media became an important element of their business strategy. Whenever The Heart Bandits planned a unique or particularly appealing proposition, Michele contacted local publications.

At the time, “I didn’t know what I was doing,” she says. “But I just really wanted it and was doing everything I could to make it happen.”

About three years after starting The Heart Bandits, Michelle decided she was ready to quit her full-time job and focus on growing her business. Marvin followed suit and quit his job in 2015.

Before their two children were born, Michelle and Marvin frequented the popular proposal destination. Currently, they plan their proposals primarily remotely, drawing on an extensive network of international vendors.

According to Michelle, New York City is the most popular city to propose, followed closely by Paris. He is also planning to propose in Puerto Rico, Singapore, Australia, Mexico, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands.

The Velazquez’s originally charged just $300 to create a plan for a custom proposal, but after working with a business consultant, they decided to increase their rates, which Michele said was a “big change” in their income.

The company’s current pricing is not publicly available, but Michele said custom proposals come with a flat fee ranging from $1,649 to $2,149, depending on labor, in addition to costs such as materials and vendor fees. If the amount exceeds $8,000, they will charge 20% of the budget instead of a flat fee.

Michele said the lower end of the price range is for customers who “already have a vision in mind and now they just need to execute,” while the higher end covers brainstorming ideas, creating plans, and being on the ground to make sure everything runs smoothly.

The Heart Bandits also offers pre-designed proposal packages, custom date planning and proposal planning masterclasses, but Michele says these services make up a much smaller portion of the business.

The Velazquez’s run The Heart Bandits out of a shared residence. “That’s the great thing about our business,” Marvin says. This is not a “brick and mortar” operation that keeps overhead costs low.

According to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It, Heart Bandits brought in seven-figure gross revenues in 2024 and 2025, with mid-six-figure gross profits in both years after paying vendor fees.

They typically reinvest some of their profits back into the business to keep up with the times. For example, hire a social media content creator to optimize your business’s online presence.

Looking back, Michele says the proposal he had planned in the early days of the Heart Bandits was “funny compared to now.” In one such proposal, she and Marvin hiked to the top of the Hollywood Hills and “created a cute little picnic for ourselves.”

“We made handmade signs and brought in In-N-Out because the client really wanted it. We drove away the ants,” she recalls.

Since then, Michele says, the bar for marriage has gotten even higher. They are currently “bringing in fireworks” and are arranging for a helicopter. “It’s changed a lot,” she says.

Marvin believes part of this is due to the rise of social media. Many clients focus on “photo-worthy” proposals rather than intimate ones, he says.

The proposal planning industry has also changed. In the early days of her business, when Michele approached other wedding vendors about the possibility of collaborating, “they would laugh at me,” she says. “They said, ‘That’s ridiculous. There’s no money here.'”

Michele said some of the vendors who once rejected her are now launching their own proposal planning services.

Many competitors have emerged in recent years, but the Velazquez’s hope to stand out by proving the value of their 16 years of experience. “I know what to do when it rains. I know what to do when a park ranger asks if I have a permit,” Michele said.

She says the biggest business lesson they’ve learned from running The Heart Bandits for 16 years is to “evolve with the times.”

“The world has changed,” she added. “If we hadn’t shifted accordingly, we would have been left behind.”

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