After watching this video, we're convinced this Sleeping Beauty has found her Prince Charming.
In this viral video, Lee Loechler pulls off the ultimate proposal by making his high school sweetheart, Sthuthi David, the subject of her favorite movie Sleeping Beauty, with the help of illustrator Kayla Coombs. Of course, his cardiologist girlfriend was entirely unaware of the months of hard work he put into creating this proposal, which makes the video that much sweeter.
More importantly, Sthuthi said yes to marrying him.
"She was sort of expecting the proposal around this time so I knew I had to be pretty sneaky if I wanted to give her a good surprise, because she is very astute, no pun intended, and you know she's a doctor so she is very smart, very cerebral," Lee told E! News.
He said he subscribed to the theater's mailing list to find out what movies were playing and created a doctored email that promoted a screening of Sleeping Beauty, which he had her mom, who was in on the plan, send to Sthuthi.
"I had a very proud moment a few days later when she called me up and invited me to her own surprise proposal," he said.
Lee created a spot-on animation of himself and Sthuthi specifically in the scene where Prince Phillip awakens Aurora with a kiss on the lips. He also went a step further by arranging for some of Sthuthi's family and friends to be present for the proposal and to document the entire experience.
As if that wasn't enough to win her over, Lee arranged for his onscreen presence to toss him the engagement ring.
Then, the Prince urges Lee to pop the question already, only for Lee to respond, "It's not every day you get to propose to your high school sweetheart, so I'm gonna take my time."
"I love you with my whole heart, including all of its ventricles, atriums, valves—She's a cardiologist." He explains to the crowd she's a doctor, before asking his girlfriend, "Will you live happily ever after with me?"
After the obligatory hugs and kisses the couple sat down to watch their onscreen characters ride off in a carriage with fireworks in the background. "That was so good!" his fiancé exclaims.
I picked Sleeping Beauty because it is Sthuthi's favorite movie and I've known that since she and I dated in high school," Lee told E! News. "One of my presents to her, I think it must have been Christmas, I got her a DVD version of the movie because I knew how much she loved it. It was something that she would watch growing up in India and it had a lot of emotional significance to her and she has probably watched it 100 times."
He said he thought, "I can't compose a symphony, I don't have any idea how to make a flower arrangement, but I went to four years of film school at the greatest film school in the world, NYU, and maybe there is a way I can tap into that."
While most of the Internet is marveling at Lee's dedication to his future wife and the engagement, others are moping about the expectations this creates. As one YouTube commenter put it: "This is going to blow up and make proposals standards deeply unfair to the rest of us."
"I think this worked so well because this was such a Lee Loechler and Sthuthi David proposal that it felt perfect for us, but I think there are other people out there who are probably already dreaming up proposals that are super special in their own ways, in ways that I could never do," Lee told E! News. "I hope in a way this has sort of been a catalyzing moment and you will start to get some really special proposals going forward."
The two have not set a wedding date.
"It's funny 'cause we are doing long distance right now," Lee told E! News. "She is based in Virginia and I am out in L.A., and for the next year and a half, she is going to be finishing up her residency. In part she would've been done in six months, but she so amazing at what she does, she got picked to be one of her program's chief residents, which is like a huge honor and it means she will spend an extra year in Charlottesville shepherding the next generation, next cohort of residents."
"The earliest we would be in the same city is about a year and a half from now and in both of our heads, we talked about this the preliminary way, like it might be silly if we went and got married and then after the ceremony be like, 'Alright, I'm going back to LA,' 'OK, I'm going back to Charlottesville, see you in a couple months.' It's like, we sort of figured it made sense to wait until we are in the same place."
When asked if their wedding will have a Sleeping Beauty theme, he said, "I feel like at this point the internet will destroy us if we don't incorporate it in some sort of capacity, so I think it is safe to say there will be some Sleeping Beauty elements."
(Originally published on Thursday, Jan. 10, 2020 at 7:19 p.m. PT)