Aurora shooting victim surprised with touching marriage proposal

Bonnie Kate Zoghbi experienced the darkest and one of the happiest moments of her life in a place you would never expect: a movie theater.

Bonnie Kate was in attendance at "The Dark Knight Rises" midnight screening in Aurora, Colo. on July 20, 2012, when James Holmes opened fire on the audience, killing 12 and injuring 70. She suffered a gunshot wound to her left knee, and as she was trying to escape the theater, she says Holmes pointed an AR-15 assault rifle at her back and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed, allowing another theatergoer to pick her up and carry her to safety.

"Everything has pretty much healed up but I live in constant pain I deal with every day," Bonnie Kate told ABC. "I just realized how greatly it impacted me recently. A lot of mental battles pushing through the pain."

Bonnie Kate spent two weeks recovering at a hospital in Colorado and one week at a hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But less than two years later in the aftermath of the shooting, Bonnie Kate's boyfriend and now husband Max Zoghbi found hope. Zoghbi, 26, is a filmmaker based out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When Zoghbi was ready to pop the question, he wanted to do so in a way that brought light to Bonnie Kate's dark situation.

"Just seeing her soldier on everyday and dealing with me and my ridiculousness, I wanted to do something that was an expression of who I was, a filmmaker, a hopeless romantic goofball," Zoghbi said. "Making sense of the darkness in the theater, wrestling with that, coming to terms with it, sharing that god can take something awful, and in a little way shine a little bit of light through."

On Jan. 10, at the Cinemark Perkins Rowe theater in Baton Rouge, Zoghbi took Bonnie Kate to the movies, where she unknowingly watched a romantic short film that had been directed by Max. It was here that Max began his touching, elaborate marriage proposal, with the couple's friends and loved ones contributing along the way.

"It was really just identifying places in our relationship that meant a lot. I wrote the script in early December (2013), assembled the cast and crew and short the thing in January," Zoghbi said on the logistics of shooting the short film. "Getting the movie theater on board, getting my brothers to learn the song, a lot these things flowing around. It was a group effort, everything fell into place so it was very special."

The couple was married on May 24. The entire romantic extravaganza was released in a film by Zoghbi called "Wildflower" on Sept. 18, detailing the couple's story, Bonnie Kate's triumph through tragedy, the remarkable wedding proposal, and the couple's happy epilogue. The film, available below, has become a viral sensation, with over 200,000 views and many positive comments from social media users.

"Max didn't make it with the intention of putting it on YouTube, he made it for us and showing our kids one day," Bonnie Kate said.

"As a director and editor I really thought hard about if I put this online that opens my audience to everybody, people are going to find reasons to hate it...it's a strange place to be so vulnerable on the web, I really appreciated people stepping into our story and letting us see into theirs a little bit," Zoghbi said.

Bonnie Kate was surprised and touched by the elaborate romantic gesture.

"I was so excited it felt like my heart was about to pop with joy. I was hoping for it, let's just get married let's just get engaged, I can't even put it into words."