Jon & Vikki's Engagement & The Making Of...

This is a story not much about our life necessarily but that of a friends and since today is Jon's birthday and I wanted to post these pictures I decided to blog it. Jon is one of Danes very best friends and former mission companions and we love him to death. We have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Jon over the past few years, since he moved to Utah for a production designer job at an animation studio.

 Almost a year ago, Jon met this cute little scottish girl named Vikki (whom we also love and adore) and we just knew he would end up marrying her.  In fact, pretty early on we would ask Jon at the end of our double dates when he was going to do it already. Well one day he surprised us and said he also knew he was going to marry her and that he was ready to propose. But he said that he wouldn't do some sappy proposal that had already been done. He argued with Dane & I that there was no such thing as a romantic and original proposal left in this world. A few days later he called us and told us he had thought of 'the one' but that it was extremely elaborate and would take a ton of work and time to pull off.

His grand vision involved shooting a faux movie preview but of theatrical quality and playing it at a movie theater before a new release movie. The plan was I  would tell Vikki I got a few sneak preview tickets from my brothers PR firm and Jon would be conveniently busy at work.  Then in the middle of said awesome fake preview, the lights would turn on (Vikki would then realize that all of their good friends, coworkers, and family who were able to attend made up the audience) and Jon would enter and would propose to Vikki.  He talked to the folks at the Gateway Megaplex who said they could work with him.

Well long story short, Jon had access to a red camera and other high quality movie shooting equipment due to his work environment and the games began. Jon spent weeks upon weeks hand sewing and creating from scratch two awesome well known muppets to star in a mock sesame street movie preview. After the muppets and props were made he enlisted a few lighting guys, sound guys, and his trusty friends to help him with the shoot. We had a blast and after a couple really long nights the shooting was done. I got to play the waitress at the cafe, Dane was the voice of a certain red monster, and Dan (yes this is the same Dan from my spring post about the fake LDS Singles Account) was the voice of a particular blue super monster. My sister even stopped by and helped with another random muppet girl and also a famous green frog who were walk by characters. We survived a massive rain storm which in turn caused a black out in this massive windowless warehouse studio where we were filming which ensued to a few blair witch moments i.e. scary crying baby in another part of this empty (so we thought) studio and a crazy flying goose overhead.  Holy Creepy.

Anyways the processing and editing of the red camera's film took much longer than expected and with Vikki getting ready to head home to Scotland, time was of the essence and showing the preview at the Gateway was becoming a harder reality in this time frame. So although Jon may have wanted some changes and possibly some voice over work completed at the end of the preview, he decided to put it on a dvd and show it at our house before a movie and after a night out, just a few days before Vikki had to leave.

So the four of us met up with Bubba and Jess for sushi and Afterwards we sent Jon and Vikki on an errand to pick up ice cream from the store. Luckily this bought us some time to come back, set things up a bit, and make sure that the dvd that Jon made worked in our temperamental dvd player. Jess and I tried relentlessly to hide a video camera on a near by end table, by sitting awkwardly in front of it until the time came to capture Vikki's reaction. They came back with ice cream and the four of us who had been setting up took our places on the couches, so that Vikki and Jon would not have a choice of where to sit (This helped with the video camera placement) Jon got a fake phone call, which was our cue to start the movie/preview. Jon's creative preview played and Vikki sat there silently enamored and possibly in shock with a big smile on her face. JOn then came back in the room as the video dictated and said some amazingly sweet things and Presto they are now engaged :) We had a lot of fun being apart of your special night. We love you guys and are so excited for you to start your life together! Click Here to Watch the Proposal Movie Preview