Book Brooke Princess Parties

Brooke Caroline Burns has worked as a party princess for many years now. But the first time one of her princess roles went viral on TikTok, it was by accident. Literally.

In July of 2021, the police came to her door to inform her that someone had crashed into her parked car and totaled it. Despite being mentally focused on the accident, Brooke still had to work her job as a party princess. When a child asked her, “How was your day, Aurora?” she replied in her princess voice, “I had the loveliest time!” while images of her car being loaded onto a tow truck played in her mind. She found the whole situation humorous, and she uploaded a brief skit about it to TikTok. “It got 6 million views. That was my first video that blew up. It was crazy.”

Prior to the accident, Brooke did not consider herself a content creator. But now, with over 3 million followers on YouTube, Brooke works as a princess full-time. In addition to paying the bills, it has allowed her to be a role model for children across the country.

Brooke’s car accident story is not the first time she was able to turn an upsetting situation into a positive outcome. When Marymount Manhattan College, where Brooke was studying musical theater, shut down in-person classes due to COVID halfway through her senior year, it was a huge disappointment. While normally seniors would have an end-of-year showcase, which served as an opportunity to set students up with agents, there was no showcase in 2020 (and not many acting jobs available anyway).

While this was a challenging time, Brooke also credits it with helping her gain skills that led to her becoming successful on social media. She was required to purchase a ring light and backdrop for school. She got the hang of filming herself. Ultimately, she had the idea to film her experiences as a party princess, a job she had already been doing for many years at that point.

Brooke’s journey as a princess began in 2013 (unless you count her preschool graduation, where she told everyone she wanted to be a mermaid when she grew up. She says the audience laughed, but these days, she regularly plays Ariel.) “In high school, I had really long hair, and everyone called me Rapunzel.” She decided she wanted to be Rapunzel for Halloween, but she didn’t want to buy a costume. Instead, her mom hired a friend to sew the costume. It was too nice (and too expensive!) to only use once. She started working as a princess for local parties. “It wasn’t an official business, just something I did a few times a year.” Brooke still has her original Rapunzel dress in her closet.

During her college senior year, before COVID hit, she began working for a small business called “Let’s Dress Up” in New York, which hosted tea parties. She began to do more princess work with them, but she still had not jumped into the world entirely. “I didn’t have any wigs, and I just had my Rapunzel costume.” Once she was back home because of the pandemic, she began booking virtual princess calls. “I started doing a lot of princess Zoom calls to keep kids busy while their parents were working. I would do it for forty minutes, and the parents would say, ‘My kid is not going to sit here for forty minutes,’ but they would. I made up so many games.”

It was around this time that she uploaded the video of her princess party car accident story. “I remember being very excited and constantly refreshing the video and seeing the numbers go up.” The viral video helped her get a lot of virtual bookings at the time. These days, not everyone who hires her for in-person parties knows that she has such a massive online following until older kids at the party recognize her. They’ll whisper to their parents, “That girl’s from YouTube! That girl’s from TikTok!”

When asked to reflect on why her videos gained such a large following, Brooke thinks it’s because she has not been afraid to show all the ways she isn’t perfect. “My dresses have torn, I’ve had all these things happen, I’m wacky and imperfect and less polished than you might typically think a princess would be.” She says that in those ways, she believes she is relatable to her audience.

Brooke’s husband, Sean, is a lawyer. (He was also her high school “Prince Charming”.) She says that sometimes, when someone new learns about their jobs, they will automatically assume Sean is the primary breadwinner. However, that is not the case. According to Brooke, Sean has always been incredibly supportive of her career path. It was his suggestion to start uploading her videos from TikTok to YouTube. He also has had an important off-camera role holding up her character’s sidekick: a stuffed unicorn named Sparkles. “Two years ago, kids started making their own video accounts for Sparkles. It was super sweet. I made an official account for her… I wasn’t planning on posting much, but my husband was like, ‘Give me the login.’ He would get home from work as a lawyer and hold Sparkles for the camera. He recently gave it up, but he did get 100,000 subscribers. There’s a YouTube plaque for her. He hasn’t hung it up yet.” Brooke says that Sean officially retired from the position of Sparkles this summer. “He said, ‘It was fun, but I’m tired now.’”

In addition to Sparkles, Brooke’s original character, “Princess Brooke,” has been turned into a stuffie. She says that she likes to gift the miniature Princess Brooke to children who request that character for their party.

There are many aspects of Brooke’s job that she finds rewarding. It is very meaningful to receive messages from parents expressing how happy they are that their child looks up to someone who they feel is a good person and a positive role model. She recalls a message recently in which a parent told her, “If it means anything to you, my daughter is seven, and she says that her favorite princess is a princess named Princess Brooke. I’ve always thought as a parent, princesses are supposed to be people who are kind and who lift each other up; my daughter watching you makes me feel happy.” Recently, Brooke even spoke with someone who decided to become a party princess after watching her videos. During a trip to Disney World with Sean this summer, a teen or tween would come up to her nearly every day and say, “Excuse me, are you Princess Brooke?” “It definitely made me feel like a princess.”

While there are many positives to Brooke’s profession, there are also downsides. She has received messages telling her she should die. Men have made inappropriate comments to her online and in person. People sometimes feel that they are entitled to comment on her age and body as they please. “One dad once asked me my age at a party and commented, ‘Wow, Cinderella’s getting old.’ People will say things online like, ‘Oh, well, that Elsa’s fat.’ Or, ‘What do you say to kids when they ask why you aren’t as skinny as in the movie?’ You know what? The kids have never said any of those things. It’s always the adults.”

People often assume Brooke has to have thick skin to be this successful on social media. “But I don’t. I don’t know how I get through it sometimes. There’s definitely a weird side of social media that’s not always talked about. It can be very tricky mentally. But the kids always make up for it. Having kids come up to me will always make up for it. I often second guess myself, but then I go to a party, I look around and think, ‘I’m here, everyone seems happy, I must be doing something right.”

Like many small business owners, Brooke describes her work as 24/7. “Home is work; I feel like I’m always working. If I’m not making a video, I’m emailing a client. If I’m not doing that, I’m heading to a party… My brain is never quiet. It isn’t the healthiest, I know. I’ll be out and I’ll think, ‘Oh, I can make a skit about that!’ I know a lot of creative people work that way.”

“Social media is a great job, but the income fluctuates month to month.” Brooke says that she tries to challenge herself to make each month more successful than the last, but she has had to accept that this is not always possible in her line of work. It helps that she does in-person parties as well and also teaches theater classes locally. “I’m not putting all of my eggs in one basket.”

Brooke notes that she’s been thinking about the future a lot recently. She feels like she could possibly make videos for the rest of her life, but she can’t be a party princess forever. She is slowly trying to integrate more comedic skits into her platform.“I’m trying to experiment a little bit more without going too far from what people follow me for.” She recently signed with an agency for social media and has been doing more brand deals. She hopes that when she finally does “hang up the crown” she can go into more commercial acting or try out different avenues of performance. But she hopes to continue with social media as well.

“I’m doing what I always wanted to do; I always wanted to perform. I never thought to myself, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a YouTuber one day.’ I never thought my life was going to work out this way. I still don’t know exactly how I got here, it all just kind of… happened. But now I’m here. I’m making money by performing and singing, and that was what I always dreamed about. I get to make people happy every day; I get to make people laugh. I’m definitely very lucky to have this job, and I’ll always feel super grateful for it.” Brooke says that the aspect of her work that still brings her the most joy is party princessing through her “Book Brooke” business. “To actually connect with people in person rather than online, to have face-to-face interactions…it makes everything worth it. I always want people to know that I’m really grateful when they book me. It feels great when a friend group books me for all of their kids because I love seeing familiar faces. I am grateful for every single party. I want to leave and for people to feel glad that they had me there.”