This stop-motion save-the-date tells a long distance love story (with dynamite!)

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We attended a party which featured an Iron Throne photobooth that turned your pics into animated gifs. And that's when it hit us: This Iron... Read more

Justine and Josh crafted one of the most creative save-the-date videos we've ever seen. It's like stop-motion animation meets live action comedy meets sheer adorable charisma. I'm pretty sure anyone would cancel all of their plans to accept this particular invitation.

Plus, a whole lot of us know the pain that a long distance relationship can bring. This pair took 90+ hours (each!) to craft this epic stop-motion save-the-date FROM OPPOSITE COASTS! You'll see how that played out in the vid. We've got the behind-the-scenes take from the couple right here…

The only thing we knew upfront was that we wanted the video content to uniquely represent us, where if you put anyone else in the same video, it wouldn’t make sense. Aside from that, nothing from the original ideas made it into the final video (and we have exactly 70 pages of brainstorm notes and terrible drafts to prove it!). The ugly truth is that the concept was the product of probably 50 hours of iteration, 30 hours of production, and 10 hours of editing (times two if you count our individual hours separately). Also, working from separate coasts was a bit of a pain, but overall we’re super happy with the result.

We took about 1000 photos on my iPhone 7+ propped on an inexpensive tripod + a Bluetooth remote we found on Amazon. We touched up the photos on Google Photos, edited the video on iMovie, bought sound effects from pond5.com, and paid Mr. Jack Johnson $1.29 via iTunes for his lovely song. Props were made with state of the art scissors, construction paper, cardboard, and A LOT of coffee.

The guests' reactions were a healthy mix of delight (“Cute video!”) and confusion (“How? Why?!”). We were so close to it that we were worried people wouldn’t get it, but luckily they did.

I’d be lying if I said it was entirely a smooth process. We definitely argued more than once on creative direction. Imagine me fighting for a dark, social commentary on love, and Justine fighting to evoke Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” (<- true story). Ultimately, though, our communication as partners improved tremendously. If you want to learn something new about your partner (even after eight years for us), try co-project management.

About the Author: Catherine Clark

@enidjcoleslaw @bijouxandbits @bijouxandbits

Catherine Clark loiters at her local library, makes art, watches movies en masse, plays video and tabletop games, poorly cooks healthy things, cuddles with her feline fur babies, and blogs at BijouxandBits.com.