Go to any given sunrise or sunset on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park this summer, and you’re bound to see somebody down on one knee.

Maybe even more than one person, said Kate Harris of Kate & Keith Photography, who’s been documenting marriage proposals on Mount Desert Island with her husband for the past decade.

When they started out, she didn’t know of anyone else offering the same service in the area.

“Now there are quite a few,” she said.

The barn-wedding trend raised Maine’s profile as a place to get hitched, leading to a glut of new venues, some of which are now struggling to turn a profit. But with mounting pressure to pull off proposals that will make your future fiance’s Instagram followers swoon, our state increasingly is being used as the backdrop for another romantic milestone.

Destination proposals are the top engagement trend of 2026, followed by replicating the scene Travis Kelce set up to pop the question to Taylor Swift, according to London-based proposal planning agency The Proposers.

That’s right, proposal planning agencies are a thing (with a reality TV show to boot), and offering similar services is a growing part of the job of others involved in the marriage business, including photographers, wedding planners and innkeepers.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Connie Mills, owner of All in One Weddings, has been helping with proposals for 20 years, since she started her Maine- and Florida-based wedding planning business. Within the last few years, though, they’ve gotten a lot more elaborate, she said.

She attributes the change to people feeling like they to need live up to what they see others doing on social media.

“Keeping up with the Joneses, if you will,” she said.

Her packages range from $350 for photos to $3,000, if a hotel stay is involved, and can include everything from a red-carpet rollout at Portland Head Light to a violinist hiding her instrument under a blanket on a sunset sail until the time is right.

Portland Head and Acadia are the two most common locales where clients of Union-based photographer Stacie Summers want to get engaged. Although the website of her business, SummersCinema, offers wedding and family photos too, she emphasizes her proposal and elopement photography on Instagram because she saw it as niche that she could lean into — and one that she enjoys.

“I love the adrenaline of hiding and waiting and planning,” said Summers, who has booked more proposals each of the four years she’s been in business in Maine, averaging four a month last season.

Most people who reach out are men proposing to women and aren’t typically the planners in their relationship. She’ll offer advice on what to wear and how to lure their partner to the spot they chose without giving the surprise away. Common pitfalls include seeming overly concerned about getting there at a certain time or appearing too familiar with an area they’ve never been (thanks to the maps and directions provided by Summers).

THE COUPLES’ STORIES

Checking Acadia off a list of national parks to visit is often the reason couples get engaged in Maine, photographers said.

Lindsey Powell just wanted to see the leaves change.

A lifelong Florida resident who’d never experienced fall foliage, she was the one who suggested the Acadia trip to her high school sweetheart, Dillon, in the fall of 2024. Together for six years, they had started talking about getting married, and it occurred to him that this would be the best opportunity he’d have to propose for a while.

Seeing that he didn’t know where in the park to do it or anyone who could take their picture, Dillon Powell decided to hire a professional photographer, which took some work before landing on Summers; others he found first were already booked or too pricey.

On the final day of their trip, he told Lindsey he wanted to take one last drive around the park before dinner and, as they approached Otter Point, he stopped because there was a big rock he wanted to see — nothing unusual for him, she said.

It was only when he took off his rain jacket and chucked it aside — his signal to Summers — that something seemed strange to Lindsey, but she didn’t have time to think about it before he was asking her to spend the rest of her life with him.

Both always figured they’d get engaged in Florida, but Dillon is glad he saw a chance to do something different. Now married, they hope to have kids and return to the same spot with them.

“It holds a very special place in our hearts,” Lindsey Powell said.

Maine was already a special place for Brian Daly and Mariah James.

The couple of five years had come from Quincy, Massachusetts, for trips to Portland, Bailey Island, Long Lake and the Fryeburg Fair. So, last summer, when they booked a place near Damariscotta that they’d seen on “Maine Cabin Masters,” it just felt like another one of those weekend getaways to James.

She didn’t think anything of the solo sunrise kayak trip he took to burn off nervous energy or the anxiety that returned as they drove to the Rachel Carson Salt Pond Preserve in the pouring rain — a more private spot he picked because James had warned him, if he did it in public, she wouldn’t accept.

But the sky cleared, a rainbow appeared, and she said yes. They’ve booked the same cabin for a year later, a “mini moon” after they get married in August.

Although the professionals say almost all their proposal clients are from out of state, one man hired Molly Haley to come to a private beach in Cape Elizabeth, in back of his girlfriend’s parents’ house, where the couple, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, got engaged over Memorial Day weekend.

Haley, a Portland photographer, started getting asked to do proposals in 2024, when she booked two. Last year, she did five and turned down another 18 requests because she was unavailable. She’s already booked six sessions so far this year, including two on the same day.

After that private proposal last month, she gave herself an hour to drive five minutes down the road, set up and hide before a couple from Boston arrived at Kettle Cove, only half aware of what was about to happen.