Pomfret Student Takes a Leap With Skydiving “Promposal”

When Eddie Staten, a high school student from Connecticut, saw people skydiving in Danielson on his way back from Easter vacation, he knew exactly how he was going to ask his girlfriend of about two years to prom.

So the Madison resident and Pomfret School student took a leap, quite literally. He got Skydive Danielson, to take his idea to "new heights" with a skydiving promposal.

A YouTube video, titled "Best Promposal Ever" and posted on May 3 on Skydive Danielson's YouTube channel documents his jump. Staten said he wanted to ask his girlfriend, Talia Gulino to their prom "in a way that was special, something that she would always remember." So he figured, "Why not?" go skydiving. 

He recruited a group to come with him, including his twin brother and about 10 of his friends from the private co-ed boarding school in Pomfret that he attends with Talia.

"Although my parents weren’t thrilled with the idea, that night I booked the appointment to skydive on May 3rd at Skydive Danielson," Staten wrote in an email to NBC Connecticut. "Next thing I knew I was jumping. To be honest, I was more nervous about how the the video would turn out than about jumping! We jumped from 10,000 feet and it was incredible. I would do it again in a heart beat."

The video starts off with the simple question, "Prom?" with "Talia" and hearts sketched in pen on a sheet of blue printer paper as Staten asks, "Will you go to prom with me?"

"That's awesome man. So, do you think that she thinks you're crazy enough that she'll go with you?" the videographer and his tandem instructor Scott Barylski, of Putnam, asks.

Staten calmly and coolly answers, "I hope she says yes," prompting Barylski to say, "I hope so too, man. And if not, you're still falling out of the sky today right?"

"Yes" is Staten's reply before the skydiving instructor asks another vital question ahead of the treacherous jump, "Anything you want to say to friends and family in case things don't go well?"

"I love you all," Staten says, adding that he's not nervous and maintaining a smile the whole time.

Then, cut to him in the plane clutching his promposal sign, still smiling. Strapped to his tandem instructor and a parachute, he gives the camera a final thumbs up with one hand, holding his sign in the other.

Dangling out of the plane before the jump, the sign and his face flutter in the wind at the high altitude and then he's off. Instantly, his arms fling apart like he's flying and the sign is gone. From then on, it was all about the skydive, but he didn't forget to look at the Go-Pro camera to Talia with an expression of elation on his face between glances at the ground below.

"I hope she says yes," he repeats closer to the ground at a calmer part of the dive and Barylski says to Talia, "You have to say yes now. No one else is going to go through this much trouble for a date with you."

Her answer? No surprise.

"Oh and Talia loved the video and said yes!!" Staten said.

It was the second skydiving promposal Skydive Danielson has helped with this year, according to the company.

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