I was living in Indonesia where my wife was from. There, you take other people out for your birthday and treat, so I told her I wanted her to dress up nice to take her out for my birthday. I wore a suit.
Many months before, I'd gone to this Lebanese restaurant outside this complex that had a hotel, nice restaurants, and lots of other places in it, and the garden and pool outside were beautiful. Jakarta is a concrete jungle and there aren't a lot of pretty places in the city, not in the part I lived in. (The country has lots of beautiful locations.) So I made a mental note of the place.
She didn't care for Lebanese food, so I took her to a buffet right by the garden. We were both dressed up. I hate all I could with the ring burning a hole in my pocket.
I took her outside. It had rained outside and there was a covered tile sidewalk out there. A pool of rainwater had formed. I took her to the garden, got on one knee and washed her feet. She asked what I was doing. I told her in Indonesian, "What I do you do not know, but you will know later", paraphrasing the words of Christ in John 13 the best I could in her language.
Then I told her what she meant to me and proposed. They don't do the on-one-knee proposals there, so she'd never seen anything like it. She kept saying, "That's wonderful" instead of answering my question as she cried and tried to catch her breath. Then she said of course she'd marry me.
But in her country, you get engaged by going to meet the parents. So I road a PELNI ship. It's like a refugee ship, overloaded, with people packed in like sardines carrying black garbage bags full of stuff. You have to barely squeeze through to go get water or food. Food is a scoop of rice, cabbage soup, and a boiled egg, so you have to bring snacks or buy snacks or ramen noodles on the boat. I think it was two or three days. Water fills up the bathroom and women invade the men's room rather than fight through the crowd to get the women's. The ships crew lock the fire safety doors, while people smoke though they aren't supposed to in the crowded room you are crammed in. Loud Muslims talk really loud to make sure everyone is awake before the call to prayer, then you see the same people somehow able to sleep when you can't.
Then I got there, and the family spoke Batak. I thought I'd be able to know what was going on a bit because I'd learned some Indonesian. But they were willing to accept me as family, so that was good. We decided on what we were going to do and got married when we could book the facilities. Fortunately, Muslims don't like to marry during Rahmadan, so we were able to book a place for the wedding party in a hotel. As usual, there a small crowd showed for the ceremony but a large crowd came for the food. The wedding party was delayed, and my Muslim coworkers sure tore up the buffet we provided for them when we did open the doors and start the festivities.
