I was already well into my job's "every-day-a-different-country" routine, and my wife-to-be was settled into her life as a social worker in Germany. My brother, back in Washington, was determined to keep his S.O., but she was from Japan, and thought wicked smart, as a woman in Japan in 1981, had probably reached the end of the line in career advancement as a bank teller. He wanted her to come to live with him in the States, and she was all for it. But to do that, she would have to become a U.S. citizen because he could not maintain his security clearance level living with a foreign citizen. So, they planned to get married. That allowed her to become a US citizen and live in Washington, and he got to keep his security clearance. So, they set the wedding for April 1982 in northern Virginia.
When the date was set, he called me up where I was at the time (Boston), and asked if I wanted to be best man at a wedding. Hell yeah (DUH). I said I'd call up my girlfriend in Germany and see if she could make it, too. He said, well, hey, if you both will be there, we could make it a double wedding. I said that sounded like a cool idea (no arrangements!!!!!YESSSSS!!!), and I'd run it by her. So I grabbed the next phone and called her up. I told her my brother and his Japanese girlfriend were getting married next year in Washington, and would she like to come? Natürlich! I then casually mentioned his other idea, and she said, sure, works for me.
Not exactly the most romantic of proposals, but after 8 years together, it was clear to us that we didn't want to be with anyone else. So, we had a double wedding. Looked like the United Nations, and the Washington press called it the Axis wedding, since the brides were from Japan and Germany.
Talk about set in our ways, the only one of the four of us who made a serious career move since then was my brother's wife. He's still doing his hi-tech top secret whatever-it-is, and I'm still doing my insane schedule. My wife retired from her job as a social worker, and so now with all her free time? She tutors immigrant kids, works tirelessly with the Save the Children local chapter, and runs back and forth to northern Germany to care for her 91 year old mom who was at death's door a month ago, but apparently thought better of it, and has bounced back to almost normal. Getting to hold and hear her first great-grandchild turned out to be a far more powerful dose of medicine than anything the hospital had in their cabinet.
Oh, and my sister-on-law, the Japanese bank teller? Within something like four years of moving to Washington, she was vice-director of the World Bank. Her area of responsibility? Asia, of course. This is not the US military, where fluency in Arabic, as often as not, ends up with getting you a posting in the Aleutian Islands, or some such place. But this WAS Reagan's America still, and the director of the World Bank wanted some girlfriend of his to have the Asia desk. He eventually mobbed and forced my sister-in-law out, gave her some kind of über-generous severance package so she wouldn't make a stink about it. My dad was a hotshot of the Washington print press, and the World Bank director knew it. So, with a wave and a finger (and a chunk of change), she left, and, like my "retired" wife, has less free time than before.
Anyhow, so while I didn't exactly spring "our" wedding on my wife as a complete surprise, my brother sort of sprang the idea on us somewhat spontaneously. But that was over 36 years ago and we're all still together, so it's all good.
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thanks for your good thoughts to raise the spirits. 
