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Shock and Aww!Published: July 27, 2012

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A flash proposal can start at $2,000 for a simple affair, whichinvolves all supporting players — choreographers, videographers,rehearsal rental space and D.J.’s, but Ms. Broussard said that thecosts could vary widely because each event is customized. If thewould-be groom wants multiple cameras, professional dancers withcomplex choreography and costumes, the costs can surpass $10,000.

Others who can arrange eventsinclude Mob the World in Seattle and dance companies likeHip Hop Craze. For Mr. Jones’s efforts, he hired thechoreographer Derek Mitchell, who supplied his owndancers.

On average, about 30 to 50 “mobbers,” often culled fromWeb sites and related Meetup pages, are brought togetherfor an event. Many of the participants are volunteers whooften have no background in professional dancing andreceive little to no compensation. Once they register for anevent, they are sent a link to the choreographed routineand typically get two days to rehearse.

Mr. Jones, whose engagement event included the band,flash mob and camera equipment, said it cost close to$7,000, not including the expense of flying in relatives. Mr.Centner said the price tag for his Union Square event was$7,300. That figure, too, does not account for some extras.

Logistically, flash-mob events are difficult to pull off.“There were massive amounts of choreography that was

required,” said Mr. Centner, the chief executive of Highway Toll Administration, aprovider of electronic toll-payment services in Great Neck. “I was terribly anxious aboutthat. I did not do it perfectly. I missed a couple of things.”

Similarly, bringing in friends for whom dancing might not come naturally can lead tosome ragged performances. But that is all part of the charm, said Bill Wasik, whom manycredit for orchestrating the very first flash-mob event, in 2003. “You often are involvedwith your mutual friends, which in turn is a gesture of connectedness. It’s kind of dorky,but on the other hand, there’s something sweet about it.”

Mr. Wasik, who said that he initially relied on e-mail chains to organize a mob, believesthat while the purpose has changed somewhat, the use of technology, like smartphonesand social media, to pull together large groups of people to perform a random, unifyingact holds true to his original mob vision.

Florencia Hernandez, a 22-year-old cook in an Argentine restaurant in Orem, Utah, alsohired Dance Mob Nation after seeing a flash-mob scene in the movie “Friends With

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A Flash Mob Proposal atBryant Park

Dancing and Proposing inUnion Square

A version of this article appeared in print on July 29, 2012, on page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: Shockand Aww!.

Benefits.” “People are like supposedly walking around having a good time, and then all ofa sudden they start dancing,” she said. “I just like the overall idea because it’s reallysurprising.” So on July 8 at the Santa Monica Pier near Los Angeles, the serenadehappened to the Motown classic “My Girl,” and the target of Ms. Hernandez’s proposalwas her girlfriend, Stephanie Rojas, 20, whom she had met through Facebook.

“She said yes!” came a voice from the crowd of 50-plus dancing strangers when the veryshy Ms. Rojas accepted with a tearful nod. “I was shaking,” said Ms. Rojas, a day-careassistant. “I couldn’t believe that somebody would do that for me.”

For Heather Ryterski, 36 and an advertising sales manager in Round Lake, Ill., forProgressive Railroading magazine, the idea of a proposal was not so much the surprise.She and her boyfriend, Shawn Stephens, 45 and a program manager with Forsythe, atechnology consulting business, had already gone ring shopping. So when it came timelast month for Mr. Stephens to actually ask, he knew he had to do something unexpected.He found flash-mob videos on YouTube, and decided to arrange for one with Flash MobAmerica, another Los Angeles outfit.

When the pair found themselves watching a flash mob unfold, Mr. Stephens recalled, Ms.Ryterski kept repeating, “It feels like they’re singing to me!” at which point he said, “That’sbecause they are.”

The resulting flash-mob proposal at the St. Louis Zoo was no easy feat. The zoo’s strictguidelines in the use of its public space nudged Mr. Stephens into making a charitabledonation of $250 in order to speed the approval process along with the zoo’s board ofdirectors. The cost of this love mob was levied at $3,500, which included the donation.

Leo Ramirez, 26, and Ria Aberin, 27, decided to put on a flash-mob wedding June 9 inFremont, Calif., in which family and friends were invited to participate. “We wanted togive the guests a sense of involvement,” said Mr. Ramirez, an emergency departmenttechnician in the Kaiser Permanente hospital in Hayward, Calif. “We invited them becausethey mean something to us.” The planning of their wedding and flash mob happened viaphone and e-mail; at the time, Mr. Ramirez was an Army medic deployed in Iraq, so Ms.Aberin did 90 percent of the planning.

The couple did not hire a wedding planner, nor did they hire a flash-mob producer. “It wascompletely free,” said Ms. Aberin, a makeup artist and nursing student.

The most difficult part of the flash planning was getting family members to perform. Theyare from the Philippines, and the more traditional folks were “a little skeptical and littleshy about going up there and doing the moves because, I think, they probably thinkthey’re going to make a fool of themselves,” Mr. Ramirez said. In the end, all of the family(parents included) decided to go for it, in the name of their children. Everyone performed.“The dance floor was packed,” Ms. Aberin said.

The question that occurs to Mr. Jones and Ms. Leclaire is that now that they have hadtheir engagement moment in Bryant Park, with horns blaring, expectations for what theyare going to do for the wedding itself next March in Newport, R.I., are riding kind of high.But they are aiming for something less extravagant, with a band — just not the brass sort.

“I said to Craig, ‘Thanks to your amazing proposal, everyone’s going to want to come tothe wedding,’ ” Ms. Leclaire said. “I don’t think we’re going to get too many nos.”

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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 27, 2012

The previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the groom is a programmanager with I.B.M. He is a program manager with Forsythe, a technology consultingbusiness.

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