One of my favorite Gang of 100 members just got engaged! It was rather unconventional, fraught with obstacles, dower customs officials and clandestine meetings under the very nose of authority. You'll love this lengthy but worthwhile story -- told from the point of view of her now-fiancee: (Names changed to protect the innocent)
One Crazy engagement story:
That’s right, my beloved family and friends, LaPrez, the love of my life, has agreed to marry me. Now I’ve just got to tell you how it happened but be warned, this may take a while.
In June, LaPrez left for a class in Alejuela, Costa Rica (outside of San Jose) a school called INCAE. A few days before she left, I decided to propose to her during my visit in July. I also thought it might be nice to have a little ceremony on the beach, since we both wanted a small, informal wedding (to be followed with a giant party for family and friends in attendance!) So my friend Jim put me in touch with a friend planning a wedding in C.R., who in turn put me in touch with their wedding photographer/planner named Fernando. Fernando speaks (or at least types) great English, has a wonderful sense of humor, is extremely accommodating and attentive, and appears to live and breathe weddings and surfing. I told him that I couldn’t set anything in stone until after I proposed on 7/1 but, if LaPrez liked the idea, we might want the ceremony on or around 7/5. “No problem!” said Fernando.
A week ago LaPrez sent me our full itinerary that she had somehow managed to research and compile between her 8 hours/day of classes, 4 hours/day of homework, meeting and learning Spanish from her various fascinating classmates and getting violently ill just before her final. When I saw that we’d be staying at a beautiful hotel overlooking the most beautiful and dramatic volcano in Costa Rica, I knew that’s where I had to ask LaPrez to be my wife.
So finally Friday evening came and I arrived at BWI airport for my 6:30 p.m. flight. Storms in Atlanta (where my connection was) kept us from boarding until about 7:30 p.m. but I was assured that my connection was also delayed to 10:30 p.m. and that I would just barely make it. We were next in line for take-off when the plane pulled over and powered down - more delays in Atlanta. A half hour passes, and another, and another. We finally leave BWI at 9:30 p.m. and I am resigned to spend the night in Atlanta. Upon entering the ATL airport at 11:45 p.m., I glanced at the monitor and lo and behold I see “flight #xxx, San Jose, CR: Boarding Gate E1.” “Holy crap!” I think. “Where am I now?” Gate A25. About as far from E1 as would be humanly possible. I get a call from LaPrez: “Your plane is boarding right now - you can make it!!!!” She’s been monitoring the situation via Internet from her school in Alejuela.
I’m off like a rocket. I catch the train from terminal A to terminal E and book it to the gate where ... they haven’t even started boarding! The monitor was wrong - the mechanical delay is actually ongoing and they estimate a departure time of 12:30am. Awesome! The plane finally takes off at 2 a.m.
When I enter C.R. customs at 3:30am, Saturday morning, everything seems to proceed normally. But just as the agent is about to stamp my passport, he sees that it expires at the end of July. “No problemo. I’m leaving on the 8th. I have my itinerary,” I explain in my broken Spanish. Off he goes to talk to his supervisor who tells me in Spanish that, in C.R., they need 30 valid days on the passport and they send me to wait while they deliberate. At this point, I assume they will make me wait for a while, maybe fill out some paperwork, but they can’t deny me entry to the country with a valid passport. So my biggest worry is LaPrez waiting for me below.
In the waiting area, I start talking to a bunch of Nicaraguans also denied entry and the security guards about my options. Not knowing how to say “engagement,” I simply say that I am getting married and that my passport is really not expired. Finally, I convince one of the security guards to take my wallet picture of LaPrez, find her, and explain the situation. Ten minutes later, he returns and hands me his cell. It’s LaPrez on a payphone downstairs! I was elated to hear her voice. She paid the security guard to call the payphone and let me use his phone. That girl thinks on her feet with the best of them.
“So, I hear we’re getting married!” she says. “Goddamn it!” I think. “I should have told the guard not to mention that part!” “It’s okay,” she says. “I knew you were going to ask anyway. A girl just knows these things.”
A little defeated, but still filled with nervous excitement I say, “LaPrez, will you marry me?” “Let me think about it,” she says. Just kidding. Her immediate and beautiful and life-changing reply from the payphone in the San Jose, Costa Rica airport to the grimy 1989 Nokia cell phone belonging to the airport security guard who was my captor was simply, “Of course.” For a moment, all my problems just went away. We giggle for a bit and exchange sweet nothings but then it was back to the task at hand.
She tells me to get a three-day pass so I can go to the U.S. embassy on Monday and get things squared away. We agree to keep working from inside and out and I would call her back at 5:15 a.m. with an update. Unfortunately, I quickly discover there wasn’t anything I could do from the inside. But at about 5am, a security guard comes running over saying, “Come with me. You can talk to her for five minutes and then you go back to the U.S.” “Holy crap!” I think. “This is exciting but completely horrible!” So there I am waiting by the metal detector with two security guards, when out of the side entrance, comes my beautiful LaPrez – the first time I’d seen her in three torturous weeks. It was a clandestine, unapproved meeting that LaPrez had convinced them to allow by sneaking her in through a two-foot wide service corridor.
After a much needed embrace, I take out the ring passed down from my grandmother to my mother, finally look into LaPrez’s eyes, and ask her to marry me … again. And she says yes … again. We agree to get married in Costa Rica as soon as I can return. Too soon, we have to part – but then a Delta employee named Brian tells us he can get me in! It was about 5:30 a.m. and we agree that I would call her at the pay phone at 6:15am with an update. That was the last we saw of Brian.
At about 7:30 a.m., a different Delta employee comes by hurriedly and says, "You’re going home and the plane leaves in 20 minutes.” “But you don’t understand,” I implore. “Let me talk to Brian, he said he could work things out.” “Brian went home,” he says. I start to get angry. Eventually, I convinced him to give me one more shot with the immigration officers, so we run at full speed down the length of the airport to where the incident began. The middle-aged, overweight, dower customs official reads my report with annoyance as I try to explain for the 20th time that I will be out of the country two weeks before my passport expires and that I just want to get married in his beautiful county. At this point, my brain was pretty much functioning on a reptilian level, so I can’t be sure that anything I said made any sense. What I can be sure of is that with a single wave of his hand, he sent me back to gate and crushed my chances of seeing my new fiancée in the immediate future. At the gate, I plead further with the harried Delta official, rightly pointing out that this was all Delta’s fault for never informing me of this regulation and letting me board the flight at all, after inspecting my passport when I checked in. He half heartedly apologizes and tells me to get on the plane. “I refuse to get on that plane until I’m married!” I deliriously half-shout in the crowded airport. “Sir, I have two security guards here that are going to put you on that plane,” he retorts. Defeated and semi-conscious, I convince him to at least let me call LaPrez to tell her I would be leaving.
But I couldn’t work the card-activated phone. So at about 8 a.m., my dream of spending the next week touring the west coast of Costa Rica and marrying my sweetheart on the beach was pronounced dead as I boarded a plane to Atlanta, GA.
In retrospect, I realize that the curious looks I got on the plane were probably not because people could see the anguish in my soul but more likely, were due to the scenes of sprinting at full tilt through the tiny airport with security guards to talk to immigration, only to be followed ten minutes later by a determinedly petulant tantrum at the gate, followed by threats of force. Of course at the time, whether due to sleep deprivation or love sickness, I wasn’t even aware that there were other people in that airport. The return trip is a bit of a blurr. I had two screwdrivers on the first leg and was in and out of consciousness. All I could think about was that I had failed. But every now and then, a feeling of bliss would sweep over me ... “She said yes.”
By the time my Dad picked me up at Reagan National Airport, I was depressed but resolute. The plan now, thanks to LaPrez's quick thinking, is to get my passport (hopefully by Thursday) and get married next week in C.R. Assuming Fernando is cool with a slight postponement, then the only issue is whether “next day” passport service is truly next day. I will be calling PassportandVisas.com tomorrow morning to find that out. I’ve also emailed my congresswoman to enlist her help if possible. If anyone has any advise in this arena I am all ears. But I'm getting married!
