It was a marriage proposal for the record books — or at least that’s what the engaged couple is hoping.

An Israeli physics student is seeking a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records after popping the question to his girlfriend, in what the pair claim is the “smallest wedding proposal” in history.

Rather than a champagne dinner or a diamond ring, 25-year-old Elad Dekel asked for his girlfriend’s hand in marriage with a tiny silicone chip, on which he’d inscribed the fateful question alongside an image of the couple. Plated in silicon and gold, the chip measures 1 square centimeter and had to be viewed under a microscope before Dekel’s girlfriend, Chen Mendelowitz, realized what she was seeing.

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Dekel, a physics student at the Israel Institute of Technology, created the chip while working at a nanotechnology research center during an exchange program in Dresden, Germany. He presented the chip to Mendelowitz while leading her on a tour of the facility.

Mendelowitz told Israel’s Ynetnews Web site that she felt a “hot flash” of excitement after reading the marriage proposal — but said it was so tiny she didn’t immediately realize what it was. “I looked for quite a while,” she said, “zooming in and out, magnifying the image, and finally detected a weird shape. I magnified it and slowly began to realize it was a photo of the both of us. I magnified it more and saw there was something written, and then I realized it said, ‘Chen, will you marry me? Elad.’ “

The couple is now preparing for the wedding back in Israel.

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