On Dec. 2, senior Rachel Le stood in her room with her friends, seniors Kylie Tseng and Sarah Lum, confused by the candles, rose petals, the writing on the mirror closet and the apparent lack of an asker. Suddenly, senior Brandon Pak jumped out of the closet with a rose and asked her to Winter Ball. Tseng recorded her stunned reaction on video.

This year, ASB hosted a video contest for creative ways of date invitations. Contestants were told to videotape how they asked their date and email it to [email protected]. Le and Pak won the contest and were awarded free bids to the dance.

“This is the first year we’ve ever done a contest like this,” ASB vice president Izzy Albert said. “We decided to sponsor this fun competition to galvanize the anticipation and hopefully sell more bids from it.”

The contest helped to make a successful dance, as 315 people attended Winter Ball on Dec. 10.

“When I first got to [Le]’s house, I didn’t really have a plan and just had a lot of incomplete ideas,” Pak said. “I had a bouquet of roses and candles, so I used what I had and winged the rest.”

Since Pak has a free sixth period, he spent an hour picking apart 11 roses and making a trail leading from her front door to her room. In her room, he used the remaining rose petals and made a heart on her bed. He wrote, “Will you go to Winter Ball with me?” on her mirror with a dry-erase marker.

He topped off the romantic setting with candles lighting up her room.

“I knew he was capable of asking a creative way,” Le said. “He had me thinking he wasn’t going to ask me to Winter Ball at all, so I was really shocked.”

Pak supports the idea behind the contest and was happy to participate.

“I think this contest was a really good way to motivate people to go to formal and give them a chance to go for free,” Pak said. “It encouraged me to ask in a cute way and have fun with it.”