Can we take our masks off?" I ask, as my bride and I get into position.

"You may," responds a Hong Kong official, who is still wearing his mask.
Moments later, Rana and I exchange rings, sign government documents, and share a brief kiss.
Amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, Rana and I have just gotten married.
On the other side of the planet, our families and friends in the US, Lebanon and elsewhere watch
the little civil ceremony in Hong Kong streamed live on Instagram, sprinkling the video with
hearts and emojis and other social media expressions of happiness.

Family and friends tune in to watch the wedding via livestream. Photo: Rana Wehbe Watson
Before leaving the wedding registry, we put on his and hers surgical masks adorned with the
titles "Mr." and "Mrs."
This was not what we expected, when I first asked her to marry me on a freezing night in New
York City last December.
At the time, we were both jet-lagged after the long flight from Hong Kong, where we live and
work. We were also deliriously happy, posing in front of a glowing fountain alongside my sister
and brother-in-law, who conspired with me to take surprise photos of the occasion.
Basking in that happy moment, we had little clue that a deadly new strain of pneumonia had just
been discovered in a city called Wuhan in China -- and the next four and a half months of our
lives became our Engagement with Coronavirus.

Ivan proposed to Rana in New York City on December 21, 2019. Photo: Anya Hanson
Neither of us are strangers to crisis.
Rana grew up in Beirut in a civil war. At a young age, she suffered the loss of her father, one of
many tragic victims of that conflict.
While my childhood was much more comfortable, 20 years of reporting overseas exposed me to
the grim realities of war, natural disaster and political instability.
Still, neither of us had ever been confronted by a modern-day plague of global proportions.
The wake-up call came at the end of January, when the Hong Kong administration canceled
schools, shut down public recreation centers and issued work-from-home orders to civil servants.
The coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan had spread across China, and the first cases had been
detected in the semi-autonomous cities of Hong Kong and Macau.
Hong Kongers didn't mess around. Immediately, the whole city started wearing masks.