They say money can’t buy love but this Chinese couple have proven all that nonsense wrong. Chen Li, a software programmer, proposed to his girlfriend with 999 roses made of bank notes. Needless to say, she happily accepted.

As romantic as it sounds, it turns out that 27-year-old Chen was provoked into inventing the bizarre proposal. When he visited the girlfriend’s parents during the recent Spring Festival, the young couple spoke about their marriage plans. The parents, however, weren’t amused. Chen was told in no uncertain terms that he had to have a house and a car to even think about marrying their daughter. “Renting an apartment is acceptable before marriage, while marriage without a home isn’t appropriate,” said the girl’s mother.

Chen was clearly stung; the fact that his girlfriend said nothing to support him added to his disappointment. So when he got back home, he went straight to the bank to empty his account of all his life savings – 200,000 yuan. He then spent the next four days folding the notes into 999 flowers. Each flower contained two notes and took 5 to 6 minutes to create. He would begin after dinner every night and keep working until two in the morning.

He started making the flowers on February 8 and proposed to his girlfriend on February 12, her birthday. On the chosen night Chen took her to a KTV bar, got down on one knee and sprung the cash roses at her. The girl is reported to have burst into tears and immediately accepted. There’s a video online of the proposal showing Chen handing over boxes of roses to the girl, along with what appears to be a credit card.

“I know that the money in the notes is not enough to buy a house and I know that my girlfriend doesn’t want a car, and I wanted to show her that I loved her anyway by giving her everything I had,” said Chen. The trick has worked, and the couple are now spending all their time unwrapping the money roses.

They plan to deposit the cash at the bank again, so it could go towards paying for their new house. “She said she would keep a couple as a souvenir, but the rest were going towards our house project,” said Chen.

Gifting money to a loved one isn’t unheard of in China. Last year, we wrote about this wealthy Chinese suitor who sent his fiancé baskets stacked with 8.88 million Chinese yuan.