Woman Asks Husband What Wedding Gesture Means to Him, Unprepared for Answer

There are many ways to show someone you love them, but perhaps the display never looked quite like this.

A video on TikTok posted by Kristin Swenson (@helloitskristin) went viral for revealing what her husband promised her if she said yes to marrying him: planting one thousand peonies. Not only did he follow through, but he exceeded his original promise—and is on track now for 18,000 blooms.

Swenson spoke to Newsweek about her husband Eric’s incredible response when she asked him why he planted the flowers. Since the video was posted, it has received nearly 700,000 likes.

“Today, I asked him why this peony garden is so important to him. I wasn’t expecting this answer,” she captioned the video.

In the video, Eric said: “When people are dating or when they’re engaged, people will tell the whole world how much they love their partner. But then as soon as we get married, we stop saying it out loud…I think this grand gesture is my way of telling the whole world every Spring how much I love my wife.”

Despite the resolve with which Eric spoke in the video, Swenson told Newsweek that the pair’s relationship didn’t always come easy.

“If you ask Eric if he adored me when we first met, he would say ‘absolutely not,'” Swenson said. “At that time, we were two incredibly independent people in our 30s scared by past loves gone bad. We had no interest in trusting another person or changing our routines.”

In the comments, she wrote that Eric thought she was “annoying” when they met, and that the two went on to have a long and complicated “will they, won’t they” dynamic. But the pair persisted. They nurtured their connection over time and “used a wrecking ball to break down [their] walls.” They didn’t look back.

“Once we were in, we went all the way in,” Swenson said. “I see [the peony garden] as a beautiful reflection of all of the hard work we did as individuals in order to allow ourselves to have this big love.”

What Did the Comments Say?

Viewers in the comments were enraptured by Swenson and Eric’s big love, too—with some even taking the gesture as inspiration for a self-love practice.

“Even if he didn’t say it, the Earth will always know because he planted it,” @princetngirl818 wrote.

“My husband doesn’t like flowers,” @samantha_8089 wrote. “But I’m telling the world how much I love myself. Operation 2,000 peonies starts this weekend.”

As the peonies proliferate, so, perhaps, will Swenson’s family—viewers are already preparing for the possibility.

“If you guys have a daughter, she should make her wedding bouquet out of these,” @crockpotsteve wrote, to which Swenson replied: “It would be so beautiful if they included the flowers…or got married in the garden. I would be a puddle.”