Schaumburg man pops the question online
For Jerry Giuliano of Schaumburg and Katie Schad of Chicago, love's a many Googled thing.
Schad has accepted Giuliano's marriage proposal, which came in the form of a YouTube video that had just won the "Will You Marry Me?" contest sponsored by 1-800-Flowers.
The young couple won an engagement ring, a Sandals Resort honeymoon, four American Airlines tickets and a year's worth of flowers. Their prizes altogether are worth $45,000.
The video uses Adobe Photoshop and simple animation to lend a gently humorous tone to Giuliano's paean of love.
YouTube Video
For instance, when he says, "I've fallen so deep in love with you, I can't get out of it no matter how hard I try," the video shows a photo of his head sticking out of the top of a giant bowl labeled "Kate's love" as a dialogue bubble pleads "Help!"
Giuliano, 26, said there were only two weeks left to enter when he noticed an ad for the contest on YouTube.
"I wrote the wording to it right away, and then through the week I thought of ideas I could use," Giuliano said.
He submitted his video Feb. 5, and he found out a day later he was among the top 10. The following day came an interview with contest judges, and the day after that he learned he'd won.
The TV show "Inside Edition" set up hidden cameras to catch Schad's reaction on Monday, along with family and friends who sprang out to celebrate her acceptance.
"Katie Marie, I love you more than anything, and I want us to live the rest of our lives together," Giuliano says as he opens the engagement ring box at the end of the video. "Will you marry me?"
"I was completely blindsided," Schad said, having been driven to Giuliano's house by her sister under false pretenses. "It took me a while to come back to Earth."
In a second video made to update YouTube viewers of the outcome, Schad described the contest as "a great jumpstart to the rest of our lives."
Giuliano works in the dental lab of Bio-tech Prosthetics in Arlington Heights, while Schad, 24, is substituting for a teacher on maternity leave at Ridgewood High School in Norridge and plans to start her master's degree in education in the fall. The pair met at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign five years ago.
A wedding date hasn't yet been set.