Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

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.

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.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version