Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Introduction | Keeping the faith | Breaking a lease beats breaking a marriage contract |Going against the grain
Zahra Nasrazadani likes to be first to do things. So when she told her friends that she proposed to her boyfriend, they weren’t surprised.
Zahra Nasrazadani proudly displays the envelope she used to propose to her fiance over a video chat. Nasrazadani, a senior from Emporia, said she doesnt believe in an elaborate proposal. She plans to have a non-traditional wedding with a rainbow theme and colorful accessories.
During an ordinary night of video-chatting on Gmail with her boyfriend in December 2008, Nasrazadani grabbed an envelope that was lying around, drew a picture of a ring on it and scribbled, “Marry me?” before holding it up in front of her camera for her boyfriend to see.
“Yeah, of course,” he replied.
The scrap of paper is now posted on Nasrazadani’s refrigerator, where it has been for a year and a half.
Nasrazadani, a senior from Emporia, and her fiancé Jordan Hanson, a senior at Kansas State University, consider themselves feminists who don’t buy into the big “pop the question moment.”
“I couldn’t see myself being surprised by it. It shouldn’t be a sneak attack,” Nasrazadani said. “I don’t want to say that’s how it should be for everyone, but for us, that’s how it ended up.”
Nasrazadani’s proposal is only the beginning of a list of things that will make her marriage unconventional compared to today’s norms.
She won’t be given away on her wedding day. Her color scheme is rainbow and each member of the bride and groom’s wedding party will don a different color of the rainbow. All her accessories will be colorful and sparkly. And when it’s time to take his last name, that won’t be happening either — she and Hanson will both be changing their last names. They decided to develop a hybrid of their last names but Nasrazadani demands that a part of her last name becomes the first part of the new name so she can have the capital letter, of course.
The only norm that Nasrazadani and Hanson will be following is waiting to get married until they are a bit older. Engaged for almost a year and a half, they still have another year to go until they think the timing will be right.
“Part of the wait is because it’s already hard enough to juggle school and extracurriculars,” Nasrazadani said. “And on top of all that, let’s get married and do our taxes together — it’s just too much to handle.”
Recently, Nasrazadani and Hanson discussed whether they saw a point in getting married at all, but they decided it showed a level of commitment.
“Just about every other day I think I threaten to just go down to the courthouse,” Nasrazadani said. “I don’t buy into the whole ‘I need to spend hundreds of dollars to make this day special.’ We’re trying to look at it as we’re throwing a big party.”
Nasrazadani said she felt privileged that her dad volunteered to pay for the wedding. Though Nasrazadani’s family is Muslim and Hanson’s is Baptist, the couple is not big on organized religion. Nasrazadani said that not following marriage traditions, such as changing her last name, was more of an issue between them and their families than religion.
Hanson’s parents struggled more with the name changing idea than Nasrazadani’s parents.
“It’s just not what you do,” she said. “For my parents, in the Middle East a girl keeps her last name so it’s not hard for them to grasp.”
Despite not following traditions and norms, Nasrazadani said her parents and Hanson’s parents were very supportive of their engagement but her dad wondered how she knew Hanson was the one.
“I told him that we fight like anyone does,” Nasrazadani said. “Even in our worst fights there’s never even a second where I think we should break up.”
Introduction | Keeping the faith | Breaking a lease beats breaking a marriage contract |Going against the grain
— Edited by Melissa Johnson
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