I uploaded a video of the proposal onto YouTube and you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moUTM806Vqs
Otherwise, you can read what happened, and then see how it unfolded in the video afterwards. :) So here goes...
Angela and I had been dating for four and a half years and we both knew that it was the right time. Unfortunately I was about to embark on a one year exchange program in China. However, we had already bought a ticket for her to come out and see me for three weeks during my winter vacation. I knew that was my chance! I mean, how many people get the chance to propose to their beloved in another country?
Well, I had six months to figure out a plan and implement it. I thought that would be plenty of time, but it turns out, six months was barely enough! Prior to my departure to China I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but I wasn't sure how it would all work out. After dating for four and a half years I learned many things about my girlfriend and I tried to incorporate those things into my proposal plan. We both love Asian culture so I felt that proposing in China would be the perfect place! Also, whenever we watch movies she loves to the turn the subtitles on (whether the film is in a foreign language or not). So I figured it would be fun if I could make a proposal in Chinese using English subtitles. However, at this point I hadn't figured out how exactly to propose. After arriving in China I met with a few friends who would end up helping me immensely with the proposal.
After discussing with them about my plans they came back a month or so later with an idea. I could do a video proposal on a HUGE outdoor movie screen in the middle of an outdoor mall in Beijing. After a month of trying to contact the mall to ask for permission we finally got a hold of them and they informed us that my proposal plan was a great idea and they would love to help. As we continued to develop the plan I decided the video proposal was not enough and it should be more interesting. So I added a music video of Chris Brown's song "Forever." However, as time progressed, we had heard little from the mall and when it came time to shoot the video at the mall, there was confusion with security over permission rights. At this point there was only two months left to shoot both the proposal and music video (plus editing). Communications were limited until about one month before the proposal was to take place when they finally contacted us and informed us we "officially" had permission to film. The only problem was, I was leaving the country three days after I heard this news! I would be out of the country for almost a month and would return only a few days before my girlfriend would arrive. That gave us very limited time to get things set up.
We had filmed the initial proposal speech and about one minute of the song, but the rest of the music video was not yet finished. Our only option was to try and film the rest of the music video another country! While we were in Langkawi, Malaysia we decided to film the rest of the music video on the beach. In keeping with the theme I decided to wear the same clothing in both videos. This was a tough decision since the temperature in Beijing during the first part of the video was -4°F and the temperature on the beach in Malaysia was 95°F! But it was all worth it! Once the filming was complete and I returned to Beijing I had three days to complete all the editing. This was actually quite difficult since the videos were different formats, they needed on-screen subtitles, music had to be sync and audio had to be re-recorded and mixed! On top of that I had also planned to start the proposal off by sending her and a friend on a video clue hunt in search of me!
I set up 7 individual clues throughout Beijing that would eventually lead her to me where I had planned out a flash-mob dance to start dancing once the music video started playing. Once the music video was coming to an end, I planned on entering into the crowd and propose to her. The only major problem was contract disputes with the mall. We had gone over a contract for weeks, disputing subtle differences, but we couldn't come to a compromise until the actual day of the proposal! No proposal is complete without a last minute freakout!
