My progress on The Edison Project has been super-charged over the past few weeks. I am ticking items off quicker than I can publish blog posts. The back log got so bad I contemplated writing up two items in a single blog post. This is something I decided against, but all will be revealed in my next few posts.
One of the biggest items on my Edison Project has been item #26, to get married* (I should make it clear that there has been no shotgun wedding, and no one has missed out on an invite… as yet). The asterisk on this item was a late addition as I realised my mistake. An engagement needs to take place before a marriage, and so this item should really read “get engaged”, and that is exactly what me and Hana did on the 13th June, 2016 in Vienna, Austria.
The most common question we have faced since returning home has been how did you/he propose? It is a long story, but one I am extremely proud of. This post gets a bit lovey-dovey from here so feel free to duck off if this is not your thing, but in summary, she said yes.
The decision to ask Hana to marry me was one I made in October last year. It was not an easy decision as Hana had previously made it clear she had no intention of getting married. However, I wanted to offer Hana security in our relationship and to demonstrate how much I loved her. This was cemented even more so come December when Hana announced she was expecting.
Before I could pop the big question there were a number of prerequisites I wanted to ensure were covered. Not all of these prerequisites are compulsory, but they were important to me to ensure the engagement was truly special.
The first prerequisite was to ensure I found the right engagement ring. I know very little about buying jewellery, let alone a diamond ring. This I would say was the most challenging aspect of the engagement. It was very important for me to come prepared with a ring that I had chosen for Hana, one that demonstrated how well I know her. The challenge here is Hana does not wear a lot of rings, and my willingness to keep the occasion a secret restricted access to Hana’s friends and family for support. My solution was quite ingenious (if I do say so myself). Since moving into our flat we have continued to receive mail addressed to the previous occupant. Hana always picks up the mail and leaves anything not addressed to her on the side for me to filter through. With this knowledge, I signed up to a number of jeweller mailing lists under the alias of the previous occupant. This presented a handful of inspiring conversation starters on the subject of jewellery, namely rings. Whilst this helped me get a better idea of the type of ring Hana likes, it did not help with identifying the correct ring size. In the end I took an educated guess based on a thumb ring she wears. It was down to the wire on whether this was a wise decision or not.
The next prerequisite was my desire to ensure I had her parents blessing. This may sound pretty straight forward, but Hana’s parents live in the Czech Republic in a remote town called Bruntal. Did I mention that neither of them speaks English, and I do not speak Czech? So in December I recruited a Czech tutor who comes to my office once a week for two hours to teach me Czech (there is a reference here to another Edison Project item). Although not fluent, my tutor prepared me enough to write an email to Hana’s parents explaining my secret trip, and also the speech (including the ultimate question) upon reaching my destination. Given the complexity of the Czech language I also enlisted the help of one of Hana’s bilingual friends who lives in Bruntal. She was the only one of Hana’s friends who I let in on my plans, but without her help I would have been completely lost with beyond the speech that I had prepared. Under the guise of a work jolly to Prague I ventured to Bruntal in April and received the blessing of both parents. Luckily, Hana was unable to distinguish the difference between Prague and my non-descript pictures from Brno and Olomouc.
The final prerequisite was to ensure the engagement took place in a special place. With a trip to Bruntal pencilled in the diary for June, I decided to extend this trip to include a visit to Bratislava and Vienna. Despite being the capital of neighbouring Slovakia, Hana has never visited Bratislava, and Vienna was the first city Hana’s family visited outside the Czech Republic following communism. It is also one of my favourite cities, and somewhere I have envisioned popping the question ever since I first visited in my early twenties. I also wanted to spoil Hana in both cities, so I booked us into a lovely boutique hotel called Marrol’s Boutique Hotel in Bratislava, and then The Ritz in Vienna. Hana was in awe of both of these surprises, but I like to do surprises in three.
The final surprise was the big question. I had planned to ask it at the Gloriette in the grounds of the Schrönbrunn Palace, but upon reaching the identified location it just did not feel right. The climb up to the Gloriette was tiring for Hana who is heavily pregnant, and once things calmed down we were interrupted by an intrusive older gentleman who we could not shake. For the rest of the day at Schrönbrunn Palace I was juggling the ring between hiding places on my person. The toughest juggling trick came prior to commencing the Schrönbrunn Palace tour. Across the whole trip I had kept the ring in close possession in my backpack. The challenge is that no backpacks are allowed past the final checkpoint inside the palace. They are stored in a cloakroom. My solution was to offer pregnant Hana a last minute toilet stop whilst I quickly removed my digital camera from its case and replaced it with the ring. Given no photographs are allowed inside the palace, I simply kept it in my pocket risking my camera rather than the ring in the cloakroom.
We then ventured back to the hotel after a short walk around Vienna before I popped the question in our hotel room. Hana’s reaction was extremely special. There were lots of tears as I asked the question, presented the ring and recounted the story of my trip to Bruntal. The ring was also a perfect fit. It really was a special moment.
The next question is when the big day will be. We do not have a date in the diary, but we are not in a rush. Our shared outlook on this is that we would prioritise starting a family before the expense of a wedding. I also like the idea of celebrating being together with someone for a number of years by cementing it with marriage. I accept this may not make sense to everyone, but this is our personal view on the subject.
That is it for this blog post, and once again, it is always tough to find a suitable conclusion. It always feels rushed, and I am never filled with a feeling of doing the post justice in the summary. The big positive from this experience is the fact that both me and Hana have a truly special and unique story to share with friends and family for the rest of our lives.
Keep an eye out for the next post. I have already made reference to its content within this blog post as it has played a big role in the build-up to the engagement.