Graffiti Artist Paints 'Beauty and the Beast' Mural for Marriage Proposal
A talented U.K. graffiti artist known for his colorful, spray-painted takes on characters like Bugs Bunny and the Minions tried his hand at Beauty and the Beast this week, creating a massive mural of the Disney couple as a winning way of proposing to his girlfriend.
“It took him two days to finish the thing but he managed to keep it a secret from me,” bride-to-be Stacey Smith, 26, tells the Daily Mail. As a precursor to the proposal, she explains, boyfriend Henry Barnes had innocently invited her out for coffee in Bristol, where the two live.
“I walked around the corner and just saw the piece, — it was so unexpected I just burst into tears,” she recalls upon seeing the mural, which featured the question “Stacey Smith, Will You Marry Me?” in large lavender block letters. “It did all feel a bit unreal and then Henry got down on one knee. It was incredibly romantic and it also felt very strange because there were a lot of people around who started clapping and cheering.”
Yahoo Shine was unable to reach Barnes, a 28-year-old manager at the Meningitis Research Foundation, to find out how he managed to paint the 50-foot mural in such a public spot. But according to the Bristol Post, Barnes, who uses the graffiti tag "Fiv3r," always gets legal permission before beginning a mural. He reportedly used 30 cans of spray paint and worked on it for eight hours, choosing to depict Belle and the Beast — along with Lumiere and Cogsworth — because “Beauty and the Beast” was Smith’s favorite Disney movie when she was a kid.
“I knew I was going to propose but I didn’t want to do anything that was too cliché, so I came up with this idea about three weeks ago,” Barnes tells the Daily Mail. “I have never done anything as big as this before.”
The couple, who met three years ago while working together at a call center, recently took part in a near-90-mile hike, raising more than $2,700 for the Meningitis Research Foundation, an experience Barnes says he viewed as a sort of test of their bond. “It was a tough slog but we managed to get through the whole thing without falling out with each other,” he says in the interview. “I decided that if we could do that without a major row we must have something pretty special going.”
Smith, a PhD student working on neuroscience research at the University of Bristol, says the proposal was a “whirlwind” and that while the two have no concrete wedding plans yet, they will most likely marry next spring. “I really didn’t see all this coming,” she tells the Daily Mail, “but it will certainly be one of those things I always remember.”
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