On July 27th, 2019, a performer in the Medieval Tourney entertainment troupe at Ren in the Glen, a small Renaissance festival held annually in Glenwood City, WI, proposed to his partner of six years. Donned in approximately 60 lbs. of Ukrainian steel in the midsummer heat, Rick Blatz, 27 at the time, challenged Mariah Sletten, 25, to a duel following the troupe’s first performance of the weekend.
As a regular part of the attraction, the end of the Tourney includes a “Fight the Knight” component, in which audience members have a chance to line up and take a swing at their favorite contenders. Three strikes to the helmet, and you get to take home the satisfaction of having bested a knight of the realm.
One of the “squires” for the troupe–someone who helps the knights in and out of armor and makes sure they stay hydrated–Mariah was more concerned about Rick’s health at the end of the show than the duel he’d asked her to partake in for his immediate family, who were in attendance. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do it later?” she asked, knowing full well they would have another opportunity to show off that afternoon. But Rick insisted.
The engagement itself hadn’t come as a surprise–the couple had already been talking about getting married for months and had cooperated in the basic design of what would later become Mariah’s wedding ring. When the proposal itself would happen remained a mystery, however. Rick hoped to surprise her with it, in keeping with some amount of tradition.
Rick said that there were multiple moments before the proposal when he thought Mariah had figured it out. Ren in the Glen, in its own infancy having been the site of one of the couple’s early dates, seemed like the right and obvious choice, but Mariah remained oblivious to the setup. She usually assisted her mother, Chris, with a nearby booth at the festival, and Mariah had decided to try her own hand at vending for the first time that year. There was a lot to keep her distracted!
When Rick dropped to the ground at the end of their duel and quickly shed his gauntlets, Mariah became worried. Had he overextended himself? Was this the onset of heatstroke? How quickly would they need to get him out of his armor to cool off?
Then, she spied a familiar little box in Rick’s hand–upside down, of course.
“I was emotional,” is not a direct quote. Thank you.
Was it magical? Absolutely! Was it perfectly befitting our relationship? Definitely.
Did I, the Mariah in this equation, say “Yes”?
What do you think? (I did, yeah. Of course I did!)
Later that day, there was a wedding on the other side of the faire–not ours, of course, but another couple who had met and worked at Ren in the Glen since its early days. If you have any doubts about this tiny event in the middle of nowhere, be assured that a lot of love has gone into it over the years. It’s well worth a visit!
In the aftermath of the successful proposal, someone approached Rick about using our story and a video that had been recorded by our friend Emma, who can be heard in the background, saying “Finish him!”
Although not much came of our theoretical publicity, it was entertaining to see the couple of videos that had made it into the worldwide web, and the bizarre normal-folk sensationalist lens through which our engagement was viewed.
i.e. Yes, Rick’s armor costs about as much as a human-sized steel chassis ought to, but he didn’t invest in it solely for the proposal, as these videos seem to suggest. He wears it in every Tourney show, because the full-body torque behind a heavy sword-shaped resin club is no joke. As Lou, the Tourney’s announcer, will tell you: “they still pack a wallop.”
Rick and I were officially married a short three months later, on October 27th, at a local courthouse. It was the eve of a new moon and the last weekend day before Halloween of that year, so we returned home to a handful of guests ready to celebrate the spooky season with us.
We are still planning to put on a real wedding celebration someday–complete with costumes, dancing, smorgasbord, and bonfires–but the spread of COVID-19 has put an indefinite hold on those particular plans.
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