Extremely high-tech marriage proposal

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Melbourne: A Sydney man went to great lengths to propose marriage to his girlfriend by spending thousands of dollars and using a custom-built iPhone app.

Sahba Idelkhani, 26, a computer security engineer, led his lover on a 200km scavenger hunt, which ended with a catered dinner in a hotel penthouse and a surprise he had kept secret for three years.

"I wanted to something a little bit different that hadn''t been done before," News.com.au quoted Idelkhani as saying.

"I''ve heard of proposals with people utilising different things like aeroplanes and so forth, but I wanted to incorporate a little bit of technology," he said.

With that in mind, the Sydney resident set about designing an iPhone game that would lead his girlfriend on a nostalgic journey across the city visiting places special to their relationship.

Once he''d come up with the design for the game, Idelkhani posted the job of building it on outsourcing site Freelancer.com.au.

The first quote came back at 750 dollars, but Idelkhani decided to pay twice that to ensure the job was done on time. After finding a game developer in Texas, an early version of the app came back in five days.

Then, after he''d plugged in the right GPS locations, it was time to start.

"She was given the iPhone app on the day. I went to her and said: ''You''ve got an app, just follow the instructions''," he said.

The app pointed Melody in the direction of special locations on a map. When she got within 25m of the location, a message appeared.

"Once she was happy with the actual message, she had to take a photo as evidence (she was there)," Idelkhani said.

While Melody was tracking down the locations, the app was also posting her progress to Facebook.

"I tried to optimise it so we didn''t have to keep going back and forth, but considering we went to like, I think it was 12 different places, there was still a bit of travel," Idelkhani said.

At the end of the hunt was a catered dinner in the penthouse of the Meriton serviced apartments in the CBD, but that wasn''t all.

At the start of the day, Melody had been asked to bring along a few items, and she was given several others during the hunt.

"The final level (of the game) prompted her to go into the master bedroom, saying there was something in there for her," Idelkhani said.

Just like in a video game, the app told her to use the items she had at hand to find her reward.

"She emptied things out and found that there was a little tool to open stitches. She realised she had two teddy bears, so she opened one," he said.

"Inside it was a note that I put in there three years ago, which was a message saying: ''Will you marry me?''"

"I gave it to her within the first six months of when we started formally dating. We''d been friends for about five years before that.

"I was confident that she was the one so I planted that in there just in case. I was pretty confident it would happen, but if it didn''t it would be hidden in there forever anyway.

"I doubt she would have found it," he stated.

But everything did go to plan, and now the couple are planning their wedding.