People often speak of fairytale weddings and proposals, but one American man took the idea to the next level by using a literal fairytale as the set-up for his proposal.

Lee Loechler, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, worked with Australia-based illustrator Kayla Coombs to re-animate part of "Sleeping Beauty", his girlfriend's favourite movie, to include her and himself in it.

Sleeping Beauty with a twist

Loechler took to Facebook on Jan. 9 to share a video of the proposal, which happened on Dec. 30, 2019, writing:

"It’s not every day you get to propose to your High School sweetheart.

For the past six months I’ve been working with Kayla Coombs to animate Sthuthi and myself into her favorite movie, Sleeping Beauty.

The only thing better than seeing the smartest person I know completely dumbfounded was knowing we’d get to live happily ever after together.

❤️ Enjoy!"

In the split-screen video, we see Loechler and his girlfriend, Sthuthi David, sitting in a dark cinema watching Sleeping Beauty.

As the onscreen prince walks up to kiss the sleeping princess, Sthuthi's face becomes increasingly confused, while Loechler glances over to check on her reaction.

When the screen shows a "Sleeping Beauty" that looks nothing like the original princess but instead seems to resemble David, she glances quizzically at Loechler.

And the prince also morphs to bear an uncanny resemblance to Loechler, which continues to puzzle David.

The proposal

David's confusion understandably heightens when the movie takes an even more drastic turn from its original plot line, with the prince pulling out a ring.

From there, real-life Loechler steals the show back from the onscreen prince, with the animated version of himself "tossing" him the ring box.

He then gets down on one knee...

But before he can pop the question, David becomes concerned that they are disturbing the rest of the people in the audience, not realising that the theatre is full of their family and friends.

Loechler then expresses his love for David with a heart-related pun, as she is a cardiologist, before asking her to live "happily ever after" with him, to which she responds with a resounding "yes".

"Mistake" and alternate ending

The surprise proposal seems to have been a success, with David exclaiming that she had thought there had been a mistake with the film.

Loechler also injected some humour into the proposal, adding a short clip to the end of the "film" with an alternate ending titled "Sthuthi Says No".

You can watch the full video of the proposal here:

A whole lot of wholesome feels

Here's a photo of the happy couple later that night:

And an illustration of them as their fairytale characters:

Loechler used the traction that the video has gotten — which has reached over 1.5 million views on YouTube and 650,000 on Facebook at the time of writing — to highlight on Instagram that Coombs, the illustrator of the video, is donating the proceeds of her book sales to the fight against the wildfires raging in Australia.

Image via Instagram / Lee Loechler.

According to Coombs' website, all of the profits of her book sales in January will be donated toward the Australian Bushfire Disaster Appeal.

Lovely.

Top image screen captured from Facebook / Lee Loechler.