Surprise Proposal at the National Gallery of Art | Washington, DC | Bryan and Kelly

Bryan’s surprise proposal to Kelly at the National Gallery of Art was one of the greatest reactions to getting engaged I’ve ever seen! (And I’ve seen quite a few haha.) This art gallery has also been on my engagement photo location bucket list FOREVER, and I’m so glad Bryan decided to pop the question here.

Bryan and Kelly live in California, but they were in DC for the weekend visiting Kelly’s best friend, Iris, so Bryan wanted to propose during their trip. Kelly was born in the year of the Rooster, so the National Gallery of Art’s iconic blue rooster was the perfect spot.

While Iris convinced Kelly to pose like a rooster in front of the giant rooster, Bryan knelt down behind her. Apparently this was not an out-of-the-ordinary photo request between these friends haha, and it made for some hilarious pictures. When Kelly finally turned around and found Bryan down on one knee, she got so excited that she ran away! Easily one of my favorite proposal responses ever. Pretty sure this whole series of photos needs to be framed and put up in their house.

Of course she came back over to Bryan (after taking a second to breathe), let him finish what he had to say, and said yes!

(See more National Gallery of Art proposal photos here from Jakob and Maddy’s session.)

After a moment with Bryan, Kelly ran over to hug Iris too. Bryan said that both he and Iris are terrible at keeping secrets, so they were super proud of their ability to pull this whole thing off without Kelly finding out!

Genius best friend move - bringing nail polish to the proposal because you know she’s gonna want her nails done.

There we go - now those nails are camera-ready!

The National Gallery of Art is one of DC’s most popular art galleries, so we were lucky to have the rooster area to ourselves for most of our picture time!

One of my favorite spots in the East Building is by the rainbow wall panels. Give me all the bright colors!

Can’t get over how cute these two are together. ❤️️❤️️❤️️

You can’t have your engagement pictures in an art gallery without getting some photos while looking at art!

We still had a few minutes left in the session, so we were able to get some outdoor pictures too.

Had to get a few more pictures with Iris, who wanted some proposal shots as well haha!

The patio outside of the gallery is so pretty, and I love that there’s a view of the Capitol too!

Just practicing for that wedding day first dance!

I also can’t get over the fact that Kelly is so perfectly put together, and she didn’t even know she was going to get engaged and have her picture taken. #stylegoals