video call before the meet... who actually initiates it?

me and the wife been chatting to this couple from manchester for like 2 weeks now and we keep dancing around the video call thing... neither side wants to be the one to bring it up first cos it feels like youre asking them to prove themselves you know? but also we dont wanna show up to a hotel bar and find out the bloke is 15 years older than his pics. how do you lot handle this without making it weird? do you just send a casual msg like "fancy a quick video before we lock in saturday" or is there a smoother way... we always end up over thinking it tbh