When your prospective future mother-in-law takes the time to fill hundreds of cartons with colored water before your visit, it would behoove you to do something with them. And thus this unexpected collaboration was born.

Braving temperatures down to negative 25 degrees (both Fahrenheit and Celcius), engineering student Daniel Gray and his girlfriend Kathleen Starrie took these frozen ice bricked (formed by Brigid Burton) and constructed an incredible structure.

Instead of carving each block, Gray developed a kind of ‘snowcrete’, using flexible layers of snow as mortar to create the hemispherical shape required (after extensive calculations to make sure it was of a size that would not run them out of building materials).

150 combined work-hours and 5 days later, the result is nothing short of stunning – the semi-spontaneous igloo is colorful by day, but even more dazzling by night when lit from the inside. If this was a pre-marital tes, one can only hope he passed with flying (or frozen) colors.