Going for Guinness: Israeli Claims ‘Smallest Wedding Proposal’ Ever
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.
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.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
