I guess you can say it’s become viral in the nerd world, but if you haven’t seen it yet, I proposed to my beautiful and totally super awesome hot-in-nerd-glasses girlfriend, now fiance, Chriselle Buendia. And a lot of people asked how in the world did I orchestrate this plan. It honestly wasn’t easy as I started taking action around 3 weeks before NYCC, but I always had faith in God that no matter how stressful or impossible it seemed, everything would fall into place and work out fine. And with the help of family and friends it did! So here I present to my fellow geeks who want to  do something similar for their woman one day - a guide on how I did it.

My apologies for this being a long read, but that’s how elaborate it was. For that reason I had to divide this guide into two posts.

Step 1: Be certain she will say “Yes!”
When I started telling people about my plan, one question that got asked a lot was, “What if she says ‘no’? I was pretty positive she’d say yes since we’ve talked about marriage prior. It was just a  matter of me asking. You don’t want to be humiliated like the guy in this video. Make sure you’ve talked about it a few times to know for sure she’ll say “yes.”

Step 2: Infiltrate the Con!
I wanted to make sure I had permission from the organizers and they agreed as long as I wasn’t blocking any exits, stairs or aisles. Plus I wanted a free 4-day pass! So I signed up to be a volunteer at NYCC and it was the most wonderful experience! I met a lot of cool people and got to see what it was like working behind the scenes at one of the biggest conventions on the east coast. I got to scope the area out before hand and look for the perfect spot to hold the flash mob. It was also important to build relationships with the staff, volunteers and security because you never know when their help might come in handy. Special thanks to Kristin Heisse and ReedPop for their support! If you are interested in volunteering you can sign up for their newsletter and around early summer they send an email out when they are looking for volunteers.

Step 3: The Plan
Doing a flash mob proposal seemed perfect because it wasn’t hard to envision a bunch of people in crazy costumes dancing. Plus I could get our friends and family involved and bringing us all together for this big event. The ring in the pokeball? I give all credit to my friend Marc for coming up with that. I wasn’t even planning on dressing as Ash Ketchum until he mentioned it to me. My original flash mob plan was a little more elaborate which involved Hogwarts wizards on broomsticks circling around her, a light saber procession and a lifesize remote controlled R2D2 bringing me the ring (the owner didn’t want to do it!). But we improvised and everything worked out amazingly! So my advice is to think BIG (within your limits, of course), and you can always take away and/or improvise further down the road.

Step 4: Survey Says…
To stay organized I set up a free survey on surveymonkey.com. This acted as a sign up page which had general info regarding the plan and asked for info such as contact info, if they were going to wear a costume or not, dance ability, special talents, and availability for rehearsal.

Step 5: Gathering the troops
I knew I was going to need more than friends and family to pull this off. I especially needed people she didn’t know to start off the whole flash mob otherwise she would know right away it was for her. So I went to Meetup.com and joined some of the local flash mob and cosplay groups. I then pitched my proposal idea on the message boards. The group Flash Mob America - New York was a big help. They were kind enough to send a mass email to over 3,000 of their members. The next day I saw 30 new sign ups that were probably from that email blast. 60 people filled out the survey, but maybe around 40 people confirmed to participate. That’s way more than I had hoped for.

Step 6: Choreo
With only two weeks to practice I needed choreography ASAP. Knowing that everyone’s dance ability was different I had to keep it simple yet still fun for people to watch. Being Filipino, line dancing runs through my veins! So with that in mind I came up with the dance in two days. A few days before the first rehearsal I uploaded a video to YouTube of me teaching the choreography. Also take account that choreography is not just dance, its the other parts too, from the part where people circled around her, to when the bboys come in, and the red carpet procession at the end. A good excerise I practiced was listening to the song on repeat, closing my eyes and visualizing the whole entire thing as if you were watching a musical. If you aren’t a dancer, ask around your social network and help is bound to pop up.

That’s it for now. In the next post, I’ll be covering:
- how to go about rehearsals
- turning to your friends for help
- keeping it a secret and covering up
- setting multiple alarms on the day of
- capturing the moment