Creator @payge.lewis posted a 23 second clip of what her caption calls a surprise proposal, and she opens with a confession: “Was so oblivious.” She follows it with an apology for how she looks, “Excuse my face it was so hot and the love bugs were everywhere,” and a pair of laughing emojis. The hashtags are #suprise, #proposal, #engaged and #ohno.
The clip is not a close up. It was filmed from across a lawn, with a patch of grass in the lower half of the frame. In a garden, a man in a khaki shirt, jeans and a green cap kneels on a white blanket in front of a wooden pergola draped with fabric. A woman in a cream dress with a dark dot pattern sits beside him. A text line on the screen reads “Where you suprised that he proposed?”
In the first few seconds he holds a small dark box in both hands and looks down at it, then glances toward the camera. At about the five second mark the video zooms in on him, box still in his hands, and he looks back at the lens. White and blue flowers sit at the edge of the blanket and a wooden rocking chair stands beside them. A handmade orange wooden sign lies near him, and only fragments of its lettering can be read, a line that begins “We love…” and another that begins “He just…”, too little to say what it says.
About seven seconds in, the woman stands up and a woman in a navy shirt leans in beside her. He stays on one knee and, by the eight second mark, gestures with his open hand while the second line of on screen text, “Dudes freaking out,” appears over him. From about 11 seconds the woman in the cream dress is out of the frame and he is alone on the blanket. Around the 14 second mark he drops his head forward over his raised knee, and at 16 seconds the woman in the navy shirt leans down toward him. By 18 seconds the woman in the cream dress is down on the blanket next to him, leaning on one arm and smiling toward the camera as he holds the box in front of him. The clip ends on a wide shot of the whole pergola at about 22 seconds.
The clip does not show the ring being put on or the words he said. The caption, written in the first person, is the creator’s account of the day, and it says she was oblivious.
The one specific detail the creator volunteers is the weather. She says it was hot and the love bugs were everywhere. The clip does not say where it was filmed, but the University of Florida’s IFAS Extension says lovebug adults appear in large numbers for only a few weeks, in April to May and again in August to September in Florida. It says adults live about three to four days, that they do not bite or sting, and that mating pairs can stay coupled for several days. If you are planning a proposal outdoors, the lesson is in that caption. A planned moment on a lawn means the heat, the light and the insects are part of the plan too. Pick a time of day when the sun is lower, put water within reach, and think about where each person will stand relative to the light. In this clip the camera is across the lawn pointed at the pergola, with sunlit grass filling the lower half of the frame.
The logistics show in the footage too. The video was filmed from a distance, so the couple is small in the frame. A proposer wants both hands free for the box, and the person being asked cannot be the one holding the phone, so decide ahead of time who will film and from where.
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