My Engagement

The day I met my future mother-in-law, I complimented her on an unusual necklace she was wearing.  She told me its story.  The two gold circles were her and her husband’s wedding rings.  After he died, she placed them one inside the other and put a cross in the center to signify their Christ-centered life.  She attached it to a chain and never took it off.

She went on to tell me that in Norway, when couples get engaged, they both put rings on their fingers and don’t exchange them during the wedding ceremony. Everyone in Norway uses plain gold bands and they wear them on their right hand.  The rings also get inscribed on the inside with the date of their engagement, and the name of the person they are engaged to, with “din” before it.  “Din” is the Norwegian word for “yours.”

I instantly fell in love with that tradition.  It always bothered me that in America a woman gets “marked” before she’s married, wearing an engagement ring, but there’s nothing to tell the world the man is also taken.  I decided then and there I was going to get engaged in Norway. I knew Kory would never pop the question, so for his birthday, I bought him tickets to Norway to “visit his family.”  I planned to propose to him on New Year’s Eve, exactly 51 years after his mother took a highly unorthodox move by asking his father to marry her.  Kory had no idea what I was up to.

Once we were in Norway, I secretly enlisted the help of a cousin to buy the rings.  Initially, I’d planned to fly to the same town where Kory’s parents were engaged, but the tickets were too expensive so I settled on the idea of proposing in his childhood hometown as we walked the streets of his old neighborhood.  Little did I know our engagement would become something similar to the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”  The minute the cousins heard I was going to propose, they took complete control of the entire event, insisting they all be there to witness it.

In the end, and against my will, I ended up arriving at the house in a fire truck, with lights flashing and sirens blaring.  Even though I didn’t know the local customs, I was sure this was highly unusual. Kory was most perplexed, especially when dozens of relatives descended on the scene with cameras in hand.  Someone had alerted the media, so a reporter and photographer were also there.  It couldn’t have been more different than what I had planned, but having the whole family gathered did put a little extra pressure on him to finally say, “Yes.”