Friday Morning Diversion: Another Way to Announce an Engagement

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 9, 2011 4:40PM

Not content with just wedding pictures these days, more couples are having photo shoots done to announce their engagements. One couple with Chicago ties opted for something a little different.

Oak Park native Jonah Ansell met his fiancée and Northwestern grad Jamie Peisel at a rooftop party, which turned into (as their story says on their website) "a handshake (that) turned into a game of arcade basketball. The game of basketball turned into a pitcher of sangria. The pitcher of sangria turned into her buying a little black dress. The little black dress led them across the streets of Chicago. To a dive bar. To a second dive bar. To a night full of friends. To Jonah making a move. To Jamie rejecting the move. To a slightly-tipsy Jonah getting driven home by friends, whining in the backseat of his car, cranky and crabby for being shot down — and not remembering the last time he had encountered such a brutal rejection."

Ansell managed to overcome that initial faux pas and a romance blossomed. After he proposed to Peisel, she suggested, in lieu of a photo, to do "something more fun? More 'us?'”

Ansell came up with the idea for the stop-motion video below. he reached out to his friend Sam Barsh of Jesse Palter and His Alter Ego for permission to use the song in the video.

"The shoot took about six hours," Ansell said via email. The response from family and friends was incredibly positive. Somewhere along the line the video went viral, which was good news for Ansell, a filmmaker with his own video production company. "It has led to couples from across the country (and as far away as Dubai) emailing us and offering $5,000-$10,000 for us to help them make their 'Save The Date' video," he said.

The exposure could also help Ansell with the movie he's making featuring Christopher Lloyd, Kathy Bates and his friend, the increasingly popular 15-year-old Oak Park fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson.

Ansell said the best thing to come from the video is being able to make it with his wife.

"For me, the funniest thing about stop-motion animation is that it has the power to make a dorky Jewish guy like me actually look momentarily cool."