Padlocks can be found on bridge suspenders in places all over the world, and although it started as a romantic trend for couples in Paris, France, these “love locks” have now become a symbol for locking in a moment of life.
Love locks are often used to showcase a couple’s love for one another, but people have started to find their own personal meaning to participate in the trend. The several different purposes often revolve around making a commitment to something, from solidifying the strength of a friendship to making a promise to oneself for the future.
“It was just for me, with me,” Katrina Heifner said. She locked on a bridge in Seoul, South Korea.
Heifner first heard the backstory of love locks when she went on a tour of Paris in 2018. Then, when she visited South Korea with a friend who went to see family in the summer of 2023, they brought her to Namsan Tower and she learned a new take on the trend.
“I saw a bunch of love locks and they told me that people write on these locks and their wish is supposed to come true in a year,” she said.
After hearing this story, she bought a lock at a gift shop and locked in her wish on her last night of her two-week trip in South Korea. This was Heifner’s first time visiting the country, but she took the chance to make sure it wasn’t her last.
“I wrote on it that I wanted to be back there in a year,” she said.
Fast forward a year later, and Heifner took a trip back to South Korea in June 2024. She said that she couldn’t be more grateful, especially since she went around the same time she went last time.
“I don’t know, the universe works in really funny ways and I believe in the magic of love locks now,” she said with a laugh.
Heifner isn’t the only participant of the trend who took a chance on their lock. Stefany Meryo stumbled upon a love lock bridge for the first time when she was visiting her sister in Bamberg, Germany, about 10 years ago, she said.
Meryo bought a lock “on a whim,” she said, after seeing the bridge in Germany, and she held onto it for years. She was able to finally close the shackle and throw out the key in April 2023. Her lock found its home in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“At the time (when the lock was purchased), I was dating my now-husband,” she said. “That’s the one I ended up putting up last year when we got married in Vegas.”
The two went on an anniversary trip to Las Vegas last year and visited their lock while there. To Meryo, she said the lock represents the “forever nature” of their “forever love.”
“I just think that’s really cute to symbolize that in a physical form,” she added.
Veronica Szachara and Ellie Fiening, two best friends who locked on the famous Pont des Arts bridge in Paris, thought similarly to Meryo when they decided to join the trend. Their lock represents the “no matter what” of their friendship, Szachara said.
When they visited the City of Love together in April 2022, placing a lock on the bridge was at the top of Fiening’s list, according to Szachara. Szachara happily participated with Fiening. She said they placed their lock near the start of the bridge so it would be one of the first locks seen when people walked over it.
“I did it just for fun and it was something she (Fiening) was really into,” Szachara said. “It was more like, ‘I know how much this means to her, so I’m going to do this for her.’”
Whether it be for a personal promise, eternal love or forever friendship, love locks are more than just hunks of metal attached to another hunk of metal. Szachara said love locks should be seen as a creative outlet used to spread love in the world.
“It’s more than just a silly trend,” Szachara said. “It’s a way of showing love other than with words.”