How I Asked A Girl To Prom

The idea was easy, the execution was difficult, but thanks to a little bit of help - okay a lot of help - it was a memorable promposal for many.

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Here is the video. It's lengthy, almost 11 minutes, but I promise it's worth a watch.

Prologue

First off, hello, my name is Gus Goetze. I'm a junior at Barrington High School in small town Barrington, Illinois. It's spring time and that means it's prom season.

Prom season is a time filled with sass and drama, some would say sassy drama or dramatic sass. Whatever you call it, it is no secret that it can be a stressful time but everyone secretly knows that the dance and the events that follow will be very memorable.

The first thing you need is a date and then you can worry about all that other junk. Luckily, I saved myself a lot of searching and application reading (I kid) because I have been seeing a girl- Kelly Katis - for a few months now. So the next question that came about was, "how do I possibly ask her?"

Planning

The first thing I did was call up my good friend Lily Moradi. She is like my older sister because my real older sister is on the other side of the country in college. Ok yes I guess I could have called her too, but Lily is good at this stuff. To preface our conversation, I should say that I have a passion for movie making. I love the idea of telling stories through the use of moving images. It's nice working on and producing something from the drawing board to the big screen. So Lily quite simply said "Make a movie."

The ideas started flowing. I had seen this one actual proposal where a guy had his soon-to-be-wife watch a movie trailer in the theater that appeared to be live. This was the main inspiration for my movie. It would consist of a fake trailer in the beginning, a static and error screen popping up, then suddenly a few dozen of her friends saying "Kelly, Gus has a question for you." Then the final person who says it will be riding shotgun in a car that I am driving. I look over, perplexed at what he is talking about, then realize that I am late for my asking.

The video then follows along our adventures around town, gathering the supplies necessary, until we finally walk into her basement where she is watching the video, as if it had been happening all along.

Now, thats just the idea, but to quote Casey Neistat, "Ideas are easy, execution is everything."

Execution

The first thing I did was message her friends, my friends, and our mutual friends on Facebook and text. I told them all the basics; I didn't want to tell them the details because the plan was still very tentative. Only two of the close to 30 people I messaged responded within 24 hours, and I was thinking that it would be impossible to recruit everyone I wanted. I mean the task wasn't too daunting. You just take a five second video of your self saying "(Nickname for kelly), Gus has something to ask you." So then I realized most people needed a second or third reminder in order to actually get the video. It took me about a solid 7 days to get all the people I wanted.

That next Saturday, James Harley - a good friend of mine - and I went out and filmed every bit of the second half, up until the night I actually asked her. We started out at Target, then went to Dunkin' Donuts, then finally to the doorstep of her house.

Fun Fact: All of the employees in the video, from Target and Dunkin, are students at Barrington High School. I did not know this before I asked them to help me.

We got everything that we needed, including some necessary dialogue and some silly lip syncing scenes.

That whole next week I edited the whole thing. From the beginning to the people to the end, it took about a week to get it the way I wanted. There are 78 people and one Spanish class in the video. That's insane. I finally got it to the way I wanted it to be Saturday afternoon, the same day I was going to ask her.

The Day Of

Jenna Fingerman, a good friend of both myself and Kelly, helped out with the actual thing. James was obviously with me in order to keep up with continuity. Jenna was able to persuade Kelly to let her sleep over at her house.

Funny thing is, Kelly and Jenna had been fighting over the prom drama, and Kelly didn't really want to hang out with Jenna that night, but with me, Jenna, and Kelly's mom nagging her, telling her to hang out with her, she luckily ended up doing so.

I was busy all day, and future weekends wouldn't work, so It was around 10:30 PM when it all went down.

James and I arrive at her house with flowers, a sign, and an iced coffee. Jenna tricks Kelly and says that there is a new Disney movie trailer and that Disney has been collecting the reactions of viewers in order to compile them into their own video.

She fell for it.

Jenna hit record on the computer's camera, and texted me as soon as she hit play. I was then able to set a stopwatch on my phone in order to know exactly when to walk down.

Jenna would text me and James saying: "She's at Blake Swanson's part" or "OMG she's crying."

Finally when the time was right I walked down the stairs with flowers and a sign, with James following me, filming it. We then embraced after I said, "Kelly, I have a question for you, will you go to prom with me?"

She said yes.

Epilogue

We left her house that night/morning just past midnight. I went home and the first thing I did was edit it. I put her reaction in the bottom right hand corner, and matched it up with the video. I then stitched in me actually walking in at the end of the video. To answer your question, no, it was not a live feed. Her video ended with a black screen as I was first walking up her lawn, but in the final video I made it look continuous.

The video has since blown up locally on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I even was Yik Yakked about. Our school district even shared the video on their Facebook page and said "Students are coming up with creative asks."

People have been coming up to me, talking about how awesome the ask was and how I will possibly one-up it next year. I have simply been telling them that I'm not going next year because I have no idea what I will do.

Side Note: All of the people that she freaked out about are the dashingly good looking guys in our school. I'm talking about you Ethan Small and Tyler Anderson.

Well, that is my story about how I asked Kelly Katis to Prom 2015. I hope you enjoy, feel free to share the video. I had a lot of fun making it, thank you again to everyone that helped out and for all who kept it a secret. She had no idea how I was going to ask her. It was very gratifying to see her react in such a positive way, I thought I would just write it down so I also don't forget.

Thank you,

Gus Goetze

Cheesin'