Sorrow's Softer Side

How to Ask a LOTR Fan to Sadies

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, 
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, 
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, 
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne 
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. 
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, 
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them 
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

--J.R.R. Tolkien,

epigraph to The Lord of the Rings

My daughter wanted to ask a boy with a love for The Lord of the Rings to the Sadie Hawkins (girl’s reverse) dance. This is what she came up with.

First, she used her ninja skills to learn his class schedule at school so she could do a progressive invitation to keep him guessing throughout the day.

Next, she found Lord of the Rings fonts and typed out the poem above in both Elvish and English, changing “Mordor” to “Sadies”.  

She then split the poem into five sections to correspond with each of the boy’s classes and printed it all out on golden parchment (pictures below).

First Hour

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,

Second Hour

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

Third Hour

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,

Fourth Hour

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

In the Land of [Sadies] where the Shadows lie.

Fifth Hour

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In the Land of [Sadies] where the Shadows lie.

She cut the sections apart and burned the edges.

Then she bought three different kinds of donut gems and one big glazed donut to correspond with the rings in the poem. She packed each of the first 3 portions of the poem with the corresponding number of donuts into little red gift bags with black and silver tissue paper. Here’s how they came together:

For the fourth part of the poem, she did an image search for a map of Mordor and photoshopped the word “Sadies” onto the map like so:

She burned the edges and rolled it into a scroll with the fourth part of the poem attached.

The very last lines of the poem and the big glazed donut were packed into a bigger bag to set  it apart from the others. 

 

The picture (above) shows, "One ring to rule them all" written on the bag, but the message was actually changed to, “Journey to the Theater after your last class."

She arranged for a couple friends to deliver the little packages to each of his classes throughout the day, but the final wax sealed invitation (below) was delivered by my daughter in person in the Theater. He said "Yes!" 

 

Sage Thought of the Day: Forgiveness