What Makes You Beautiful - Video

I get to work with the awesomest bunch of kids.  

The youth in our ward (church group), ages 12-18, are seriously such awesome young women and young men.  I work with the young women, specifically, both on Sundays at church and at an activity one night per week.  The other night we had our "Young Women in Excellence" night where the girls share projects that they have worked on.  It's sort of a more formal night.  The theme that we chose for the program was "Be Your Own Kind of Beautiful".  We thought that it would be fun to make a video for them with the help of some rather studly young men, these guys:

They came over on Saturday and we got to work.  It was so fun.  They are SUCH a great bunch of young men!  I have never seen a group quite like them.  The older ones are real leaders, encouraging the younger ones, and building each other up.  They choreographed that little part during the "na-na-na-na's" themselves.  We had filmed the girls the Sunday before, and they had NO idea why, as well as no idea that we were doing this.  The boys knew to keep it hushed.  I spent the good part of Monday working on editing, and let me tell you, I was smiling like the whole time.  I love these young people!  Here's what we came up with:

What Makes You Beautiful - Sweet Style (Condensed) from Carrie Beth on Vimeo.

It was fun sitting behind the girls as they watched this for the first time.  The program was fairly serious up to the point of the video, and they were not expecting it in the slightest!  They were so surprised and giddy!  As the video closed and the credits were over (which the full version of the video that they watched is here), the boys all came in with a flower, dressed in their "video/superstar" clothes, and an autographed/messaged 8x12 picture of them standing on the hay bales (the photo above) and as they each gave it to a girl they said, "(the girl's name), you are beautiful."  It was so great. 

We watched the video 2 more times that night, after the program was over, and got this picture below, too (the young man on the far right had a football awards thing and came later, but missed the picture).  

I think that it was a bonding thing for them.  These kids help keep each other strong, and have a lot of fun together during their awesome teenage years.  Like I said, a GREAT bunch of young people!